I watch a lot of movies, but I am only human. There are only so many films I can watch at any given time. Because of this, some major, popular films pass me by. One of these was Pulp Fiction which I have finally seen (BADASS!!!!). Many of my peers were really shocked when I told them I hadn't seen it. People were surprised when I told them I hadn't seen 300 either. These people that I talked to condemmed Grindhouse and said that 300 was so much cooler. I was promised armored rhinos, boils on evil priests, and slow motion fight scenes. The movie was really hyped for me. Only recently did I actually see 300, and whether it was the amount of hype or because I wasn't in a theater, the movie really failed to leave any sort of impact.
300 is the rare movie that is built from the ground up to be visuallly striking. Another example of this would be Sin City. Because of this, the movie looked very, very good. The film seemed to be designed like a moving Vermeer painting with a strong emphasis on lighting and color. Rather than the lush black and white of Sin City, 300 favors a more bronze sylization. The battlegrounds, deserts, grain fields, and night sky are all extremely beautiful and really bring life to some rather limp scenes where nothing is going on. The problem with all of this visual trickery is that it leaves barely any money for sets. I hate to say this, but I actually watched parts of Meet the Spartans. The sets in that movie seemed to be very small and as the film went along, looked identical from one scene to the next. These small sets are apparent in 300, the main film Meet the Spartans was stealing from. Aside from Sparta, one beach or desert passage looks the same to me and made the film's environments extremely bland. This dampened the glory of the visual effects slightly.
With the exception of a few great lines, and when King Leonides was being snidely humorous, the dialogue in this film was terrible. Everyone was taking everything way to seriously, and the talking sequences got in the way of the action. But I must admit "TONIGHT WE DINE IN HELL!!" was pretty awesome. I could never take anyone seriously because they talked so ridiculously. This added somewhat to the charm of the movie, but it was not a good kind of charm for a rugged, action movie.
Speaking of action, this was where 300 really shined. If this is any foreshadowing for the Watchmen movie, the action scenes will be superb! Zack Snyder really knows how to stage a believable, stylish battle sequence with a green screen. Everyone of these sequences had an almost ballet quality to them in their smoothness. But even these sequences had problems. Sometimes the film oversimplified a fight, needlessly. For instance, the fight against the armored rhino just consisted of one spear throw. Come on now! I want more from my giant beast battles. The only one of these that was nicely epic was the one with the giant and the ninjas with the cool masks.
All in all, I cannot recommend 300. It is not a bad movie with its cool fight scenes and great visual style, it just lacks in a few key areas like plot, charactization, and a script. I can say that if you buy the DVD, just skip to the good bits.
