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300
By Kai Van Dusen, Staff Writer
Frank Miller, author
of many graphic novels such as Sin City and Ronin has
had yet another one of his graphic novels made into a movie, the
engrossing story of the Spartan battle of Thermopylae, 300
has just hit the silver screen.
Writer Kurt
Johnstad and writer/director Zack Snyder have done a stunning job
transferring this story into a movie.
The movie,
starring Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, Rodrigo Santoro and Dominic
West, tells the tale of King Leonidas (Butler) leading an army of
three hundred Spartans (warriors that have been trained to never
retreat and that the greatest death is a death in battle) into a
defensive battle against the Persian army. The problem is Leonidas
has only 300 men at his hand to “sacrifice” to the epic battle
against the “thousand nations of the Persian empire” commanded by
the king of gods, Xerxes (Santoro). However, while Leonidas and his
300 men accompanied by a rag tag army of other Greeks are
slaughtering thousands of Persians a day and only losing few,
Leonidas’s wife, Queen Gorgo (Headey) must convince the council of
elders, headed by the stubborn Theron (West), to send the full army
of Sparta to aid her husband before his luck and skill can get him
no farther on the battlefield.
Not
only is 300’s story intriguing, its visuals are something not
of this world. Most everything in the movie is computer animated and
looks phenomenal. The action and fighting scenes in this movie are
to die for, they switch from lightning fast to a slow-motion effect
that lets you catch everything that’s happening. (There is something
very cool about a Persian soldier running towards one Spartan having
his leg cut off, watching him spin through the air and seeing the
Spartan cut through hundreds more just like him) The original music
score, done by Tyler Bates, matches the movie’s fan-base well, and
is very well done. I would highly advise you to see this movie if
you haven’t already. One thing to note before you see it is this
movie defiantly deserves its restricted rating, it has constant
violence and some nudity, but both are mitigated through graphic
animation. It is not a good movie for kids to see but is defiantly
one to go see while it is still in theatres and to buy when it comes
out on dvd.
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