The Michigan Daily -Orientation Edition 2007 15 artspage@michigandaily.com 734-763-0379 There will By JEFFREY BLOOMER ManagingEditor Mar. 12, 2007 - In "300," life is good. The men are as pictur- esque as their surroundings, throwing their beefy vigor into carrying on their bloodline and annihilating people with dark complexions. Their equally fetching female counterparts have long, wavy hair and really, really hard nipples. Spartan women are the only in the world who can birth "real men," we're told, and based on the scenery, there's not much room for argu- ment. These are the people of Frank Miller's Sparta: They eat, they sleep, they fuck, they kill. The end. This may sound appealing to some viewers, but keep in mind that we're spectators, not par- ticipants. And that's the problem with "300": It's a tease. I could talk about how this isn't really filmmaking. I could go on about the movie's unabashed celebra- tion of eugenics and bigotry and violence. Frankly, I'd be fronting. This world is so laughably simple that those concerns slip away in favor of a more urgent one: This aggressive and exuberantly stu- pid spectacle purports to get the audience off, but it's all hot air. There's no fire here, no heat, and in the end the whole thing turns into a frigid parade of limbs and egos mutilated beyond repair. be blood Come on. We couldn't run just one review of '300.' Instead, we let two stubborn film critics go at it. They're still breathing - we think. The film has some stunning sights, and director Zack Sny- By PAUL TASSI der, who previously made the DailyFilmEditor rather good "Dawn of the Dead" remake, does an epic slow-mo. Mar. 12, 2007 - "300" is an action picture stripped of What I would have appreciated a complex plot, multi-layered characters and historical is a few less deformed lesbians accuracy. While that might cripple most movies, we find and a little more about the intri- that in "300" such things would only take away from a cacies of these people's world. film in which the focus is on aesthetic value alone. The The camera lingers aimlessly on film speaks to themes of loyalty, honor and duty, but no every lastgold-plated, gemstone- one bought a ticket to see "themes," they came to see a encrusted battle ensemble, but battle. And the fighting itself is so beautiful and well- all the film can offer from our orchestrated it carries the movie. hero (Gerard Butler) is flippant An adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel, the self-righteousness when any- movie tells of the Battle of Thermopylae, where 300 one dares challenge his FREE- doomed yet fiercely patriotic Greek soldiers fight DOM! That pundits have drawn against a massive army of Persians. Leading the Spar- comparisons between the film tans is King Leonidas (Gerard Butler, "Phantom of the and the Bush administration in Opera"), a man without fear, guilt or the ability to talk that vein is a testament to how without yelling. utterly banal it is: It could apply With the unreal athleticism of a gymnastic lineback- to any era of U.S. history. There's er, KingLeonidas barrels throughthousandsofPersians nothing to it. with a body so rock solid he doesn't even need armor. "300" has elsewhere been lik- Unlike previous onscreen warriors, he suffers from no ened to gay porn, but fortunately moral conflicts or character flaws. He has a problem - a for its commercial prospects, the million Persians encroaching on his country's freedom homoeroticism remains merely - and he has a solution: kill every single one of them. suggested - although I suspect And how he does this is the sole reason everyone paid the movie will have more lon- to see this movie. gevity as hard-breathing camp The Persian army he faces is a cross between the than as a battle epic. Whatever Ores from "Lord of the Rings" and a three-ring circus the case, no one who goes to troupe. They are led by the god-king Xerxes (Rodrigo this movie will be disappoint- Santoro, TV's "Lost"), a monstrous nine-foot-tall giant ed, exactly, just conspicuously who looks like an gender-bending version of Dhalsim unmoved. For all the body parts from "Street Fighter." He throws everything he has at that go flying in "300," the one the Spartans who dice through his army in exception- from which the film could most ally choreographed sequences where everyone appears benefit, a heart, is not in sight. tobe constantly fighting in zero gravity. Our dear Spartans will be yelling Each fight sequence is engineered to give you chills until the end of time, but before as a hundred thousand arrows literally eclipse the long there will be no one left to sun or an entire legion of Persians is forced off a cliff listen. by advancing Spartans. Slow-motion prevails through In "300," falling over a cliff is a mercilu death. most of the film, and coupled with haunting CGI land- scapes, gives the film a gorgeously surreal, dreamlike property. Dominic West (TV's "The Wire") as the slimy politi- cian Theron swipes scenes as he shows the devilishly handsome face of betrayal, while .Andrew Tiernan ("The Pianist") as the disfigured Spartan, Ephialtes, is a Judas whose appearance more accurately reflects his soul. The Queen (Lena Hadley, "The Cave") brings a much-needed reasonable voice to a movie dominated by the hyper-masculine logic of impaling all your prob- lems with a spear, although by the end of the film even she resorts to such tactics. Most of the dialogue in the film is some rearrang- ing of the words "fight," "glory," "honor" and of course "SPARTA!" but each line is delivered with such fear- some conviction that nearly all cheesiness is stripped away by sheer blunt force. The constant narration provided by the last remaining Spartan continually reminds the audience theyare indeed watching a comic book come to life. A movie like "300" is not going to be embraced by some critics who will dismiss it as a masochistic fan- boy fantasy, but the audiences exiting the theaters will surely disagree. The movieis a two-hour extensionofits hypnotizing trailer, which is what most people have in mind. It's the kind of film that is made for the fans, not the critics, and by putting every carnal desire known to man on display, it does not disappoint. It may be unfair for a film to use such massive overdoses of adrenaline to arouse an audience's emotions, but "300" does it none- theless to great success.