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All Movie Info
Starring:
Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, Dominic West, David Wenham, Vincent Regan, Andrew Tiernan, Rodrigo Santoro, Stephen McHattie, Andrew Pleavin, Tom Wisdom, Michael Fassbender, Tom Wisdom, Greg Kramer, Alex Ivanovici, Kelly Craig, Giovani Cimmino
Directed By:
Zack Snyder
Written By:
Zack Snyder, Kurt Johnstad
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300 (2007)
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Movie Review by Max 
July 2nd, 2007
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In the year 480 B.C., a group of Persian messengers arrive in the Greek city of Sparta. The messengers demand that the King of Sparta, Leonidas (Gerard Butler) surrender the city to their king, Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro). Leonidas visits the Oracle to question whether he should go to war. The priests, already bribed by Xerxes, interpret the message that they should not go to war so as not to interrupt the Carneian Festival. Leonidas gathers 300 of his best men to fight against the Persian army of 250,000. They fight to the death and hold the army for three days until the rest of the Greeks are inspired by their courage that they themselves destroy Xerxes and his men.
300 presents itself as an incredibly gilded piece of filmmaking. The screenplay by Zack Snyder seems to fall on its knees at almost every chance possible. The dialogue from the comic book by Frank Miller does not transfer well at all. For example "Tonight we dine in hell!" and "This is Sparta!" are perfectly fine, but such lines as "Come back with your shield, or on it..." and "Let me guess, you must be...Xerxes!" give you a great idea of what the rest of the dialogue is like. Dialogue in comic books often appears to be written in the same form and style as compared to film where style and form is easily able to be differentiated between directors and other filmmakers in various films depending on A. who the director and what their style of filmmaking is. B. who the actor/actress the director is working with. C. The style and form that the screenwriter crafts within. The problem with comic books or a graphic novel in creating dialogue is that they are often not long enough to be able to fully understand the depth and complexity of the characters unless they themselves are carried into further editions and we learn more about the character outside the story world. When was the last time one has read a comic book or graphic novel that there are pages and pages of character development and descriptive background information relating to the character (don't answer, that's called a rhetorical question)? Chances are those numbers are quite slim. Since comic books and graphic novels are illustrated, authors keep their writing to a minimum, because let's face it... who honestly likes to read anymore (and if you are this far through my review I congratulate and admire you) if it's unnecessary. Point being, because comic books and graphic novels are often only to illustrate events and the actions and thoughts of characters, authors sometimes cannot create dialogue of great complexity or for that matter, dialogue that doesn't make a reader (and hopefully someone who doesn't often read comic books or graphic novels) state "are you kidding, is that the best they can say right now?" When this kind of dialogue transfers from book to script to screen, it becomes even more realistic and these are the sort of elements that pose problems to filmmakers and screenwriters when bring comic books and graphic novels. This has been the problem with perhaps almost every comic book/graphic novel related with the exception of the Spider-man and Frank Miller's other graphic novel, Sin City.
The Cinematography by Larry Fong is the balancing factor which makes 300 one of the most beautiful pieces of filmmaking I have ever seen. Like most of the dialogue, the illustrations from 300 are adapted to the screen so that many of the visuals are nearly 100% identical to what can be found on 300's pages. A fine example of the masterful cinematography and beautiful art direction of Isabelle Guay and his coworkers is when the silhouettes of the Spartans that are driving the Persians over the cliff against a sunset of gore into an angry sea. The use of slow motion with the visuals is moving and beautiful...after the first fifteen or twenty minutes. If you have seen the trailer for the film you have seen that almost everything is in slow motion, however, you may be surprised to learn that all the action sequences are in either slow motion or use the "bullet time" technique. It often seems that a two minute battle scene can last ten minutes and one gets sick of this technique quite quickly. The use of colors is also very majestic, the dominating themes of orange and yellow give the film a heroic and ancient film as if you were truly reading a comic book.
Like Robert Rodriquez with Frank Miller's Sin City, Director Zack Snyder works from the visuals of the comic book in establishing his shots and the aspects of 300's mise-en-scene (what goes into a scene). If you can recall, Zack Snyder directed 2003's zombie horror film Dawn of the Dead. This young director has come a long way in his career from directing "shoot-em-up" teen bait to teen bait with some artistic value.
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