300 (DVD, 2007, Widescreen)

Adapted from a graphic novel by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley, it offers up a bombastic spectacle of honor and betrayal, rendered in images that might have been airbrushed onto a customized van sometime in the late 1970s. The basic story is a good deal older. It’s all about the ancient Battle of Thermopylae, which unfolded at a narrow pass on the coast of Greece whose name translates as Hot Gates.
Hot Gates, indeed! Devotees of the pectoral, deltoid and other fine muscle groups will find much to savor as King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) leads 300 prime Spartan porterhouses into battle against Persian forces commanded by Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro), a decadent self-proclaimed deity who wants, as all good movie villains do, to rule the world.
The Persians, pioneers in the art of facial piercing, have vastly greater numbers — including ninjas, dervishes, elephants, a charging rhino and an angry bald giant — but the Spartans clearly have superior health clubs and electrolysis facilities. They also hew to a warrior ethic of valor and freedom that makes them, despite their gleeful appetite for killing, the good guys in this tale. (It may be worth pointing out that unlike their mostly black and brown foes, the Spartans and their fellow Greeks are white.)
But not all the Spartans back in Sparta support their king on his mission. A gaggle of sickly, corrupt priests, bought off by the Persians, consult an oracular exotic dancer whose topless gyrations lead to a warning against going to war. And the local council is full of appeasers and traitors, chief among them a sardonic, shifty-eyed smoothy named Theron (Dominic West, known to fans of “The Wire” as the irrepressible McNulty).
Too cowardly to challenge Leonidas man to man, he fixes his attention on Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey), a loyal wife and Spartan patriot who fights the good fight on the home front. Gorgo understands her husband’s noble purpose, the higher cause for which he is willing to sacrifice his life. “Come home with your shield or on it,” she tells him as he heads off into battle after a night of somber marital whoopee. Later she observes that “freedom is not free”.
There are a few combat sequences that achieve a grim, brutal grandeur, notably an early engagement in which the Spartans, hunkered behind their shields, push back against a Persian line, forcing enemy soldiers off a cliff into the water. The big idea, spelled out over and over in voice-over and dialogue in case the action is too subtle, is that the free, manly men of Sparta fight harder and more valiantly than the enslaved masses under Xerxes’ command. Allegory hunters will find some gristly morsels of topicality tossed in their direction, but you can find many of the same themes, conveyed with more nuance and irony, in a Pokémon cartoon.

"300" captures the hyper-stylized look and peculiar sensibility of Graphic Novels on film., that has eluded many a talented director.
Along with British Graphic Novelist Alan Moore ("From Hell", "V for Vendetta"), Frank Miller is regarded as one of the masters of the genre. His Gothic, camp-free revamp of DC Comics' mainstay "Batman", "The Dark Knight Returns", provided the brooding template for Tim Burton's "Batman" (1989). And, in 2005, Miller found a kindred pulp spirit in Robert Rodriguez, who partnered with him to co-direct "Sin City", a smashing adaptation of Miller's noir-esque triptych, shot almost entirely on green screen to render the graphic novel's shadowy, chiaroscuro visuals with exacting fidelity.
Now director Zach Snyder ("Dawn of the Dead") takes a similar digital approach to Miller's "300", albeit on a much grander and technically more ambitious scale, to transport the viewer to the ancient, corpse-strewn 'Battle of Thermopylae', circa 480 BC, when 300 Spartan Warriors fought thousands of invading Persian soldiers. A True Tale of Bravery from Greek History.
Miller's quasi-mythic retelling of the Spartans bravely facing their "beautiful death" against the Persians is a bold and wildly imaginative example of the graphic novel at its creative height.
Co-written by Snyder, Kurt Johnstad, and Michael B. Gordon, the movie is narrated by the Spartan Warrior/storyteller Dilios (David Wenham), who introduces us to the legendary Spartan Ruler, King Leonidas (Gerard Butler). Per the Spartan Code of Honor, Leonidas has trained to be a fearless warrior since childhood. Renowned throughout the ancient world for their extraordinary valor and loyalty, the Spartans have long repulsed would-be conquerors, but they have never faced as intimidating or ruthless an army as the Persian hordes, commanded by the giant Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro).
Despite the looming threat by the Persians, the Spartan Council refuses to give Leonidas permission to lead the Spartan Army into battle. Undaunted, he nonetheless bids farewell to his devoted wife, Gorgo (Lena Headey), and young son to face the Persians head-on, backed by an all-volunteer army of 300 Spartan Warriors. With his trusted advisors Dilios and the Captain (Vincent Regan) at his side, Leonidas prepares to unleash hell against the Persians at the Hot Gates of Thermopylae — a treacherous, seaside pass on the Aegean Sea, where they're prepared to fight to the death in defense of Sparta.
This film is so intensly stylized; presented in such unrelenting Graphic Noel noir., history never seemed so enthralling !!
SEE THIS !!!! It has the guaranteed inability to fail you !!!! Wildly entertaining while revealing such a Heroic True Story !!!!

"300" is a testosterone-driven fantasy in which all men are fearless warriors, driven by the need for battle and bloodshed. War is depicted as gloriously as any geek loner-type could hope for, with every soldier being the epitome of strength, courage, and physical brute force. Emotional bonding, sensitivity, and compassion don't even come into play; these men were trained to be ruthless killing machines, all in the name of preserving the glory of Sparta. This would no doubt be a ridiculous film if the story were presented in a straightforward, mainstream way. But straightforward and mainstream, "300" is not; this is pure, hard-driving escapism, from the frenetic battle sequences to the elaborate special effects to the over the top performances. In this sense, it's absolutely brilliant.

And it gets even better. Every shot, every setting, and every event is accentuated by a look so stylized that it's practically a living duplicate of Frank Miller's original graphic novel. This was achieved through computer-generated imagery, which was responsible for creating most of the film's locations. Bluescreen technology--also utilized for another incredible Miller adaptation, 2005's "Sin City"--made for a majority of the sets, leaving very little for the actors to actually work with. I can only imagine the effort that went into post-production, the endless hours of crafting landscapes, characters, and special effects all with the click of a mouse. The work paid off; the end product is an effectively heightened reinterpretation of reality, a kind of living illustration that transcends any sense of time or place. It's the perfect look for war story of this caliber, something so grandiose and overplayed that you can't get enough.

The film is narrated by Dilios (David Wenham), a Spartan soldier with a hard-edged masculinity that shines through despite a deceptively soft voice. He recalls Leonidas, Sparta, and the Battle of Thermopylae with eloquence; when considering the heavy-handedness of war, this is no small task. Yet he always gives a perfect delivery, and that only strengthens the appeal of "300." This is in a world all its own, a world dominated by battle cries, sword fights, and bare-chested men that are ripped like bodybuilders. It's all thanks to Frank Miller, whose creative vision has allowed for a truly unique theatrical experience. If he creates another graphic novel, I can't wait for it to be adapted for the big screen.

Features Actors:Gerald Buttler, Rodrigo Santoro
Running Time:116 Min.
Rating:R

In mid-September of 480 BC, a force of 300 Spartans, led by King Leonidas (Gerard Butler), along with 700 Thespians volunteers, defended Greece against a massive horde of marauders from Persia at the epic Battle of Thermopylae. Though badly outnumbered by adversaries whose strength was said to be in the hundreds of thousands, the Greeks made one of the most famous last stands in the annals of military engagements.
Leonidas' ingenious strategy was to station his soldiers at the narrowest point in the road of the treacherous terrain through which the Persians would have to pass. As a consequence of this clever tactic, his small, but determined army managed to hold the thundering herd at bay for three days, exacting a heavy toll on rival King Xerxes' (Rodrigo Santoro) troops in the process. Although the ill-fated Spartans fought to the death, they were nonetheless credited with saving the day, because they created a delay which enabled Athens to prevail ultimately against the savage invaders. Perhaps more significantly, historians generally agree that had Greece fallen, the course of Western Civilization would have been irreversibly altered, since it was considered to be the gateway to a Persian conquest of all of Europe.


Hope this helps you decide.Thanks for reading! :)

A wonderful story, to be sure, and fit for re-telling, which in modern times means film. In 1962, The 300 Spartans was released, featuring a very buff Richard Egan as Leonidas. Although it suffered from many of the flaws of the worst sword-and-sandal epics of that era, it attempted to recreate faithfully the politics, diplomacy, and military events that actually were part of the Thermopylae story. Now we have 300, a truly modern bit of movie-making that combines live actors playing against a digitized background.

To judge this film's adherence to historical fact (insofar as we understand it) is to do it a disservice, for the film does not even pretend to be historically accurate. It is based on a graphic novel developed by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley, whose previous credits are mainly as comic book and graphic novel writers and illustrators. This film version of Miller and Varley's graphic novel is the inspiration of director and co-writer Zack Snyder, who is said to have been deeply moved both by his childhood viewing of the 1962 The 300 Spartans and by the Miller-Varley graphic novel. Miller's influence on Snyder appears to be profound. In the on-line production notes for the film Snyder is quoted as saying "Frank took an actual event and turned it into mythology, as opposed to taking a mythological event and turning it into reality." That vision clearly absolves the filmmaker from any pretense of historical accuracy. In brief, this is a comic book version of Thermopylae writ large, utilizing all of the tricks of virtual reality and digitized magic. This film is not even science fiction, a genre based on an extension of reality. In fact, 300 is one step removed from sci-fi: it is fantasy. In a recent review of Oliver Stone's Alexander epic, I suggested that there was a difference between historical inaccuracies based on ignorance and sloppy research, and deviations from historical accuracy based upon the film maker's artistic vision: 300 falls into the latter category.