My second, IMAX feature film experience (the first being Poseidon), third trip to the BFI IMAX in Waterloo overall.
300 in IMAX. Just think about that for a moment. You've seen the trailers, glorious sepia toned CD, big oily men (!?), a lot of speed ramped violence... 20 meters high! (ish after letterboxing)
300 is all about violence, the Spartan's are warriors (apart from the odd pussy politicians, some skanky-put-you-off-your-popcorn monks and some unfeasibly attractive women), and king Leonidis (Gerard Butler) in true Braveheart fashion leads 300 of them off to fend off the advancing Persian army led by the (I'm not really into Gay bondage, honest) Xerxes, who I've just this second discoved is Paulo in Lost!?!? I saw his name (Rodrigo Santoro) in the credits and wondered who he played.
Now I didn't go into this expecting Gladiator, or much else apart from some top-notch comic book action, and that's exactly what I got, cheers. As far as a Frank Miller adap goes, I haven't read anything of his except Batman: Year One, so I can't give an honest comparison. I hated Sin City (film) though and felt this was infinitly better.
In true Connery fashion, Butler's Greek accent is decidedly Scottish ("Madness? THIS IS GLASGOW!"), but it doesn't matter, once you get over noticing it when he speaks (you don't notice it in the wide mouth shouty bits so much), who cares.
My qualms are minor.. 300, they keep referring to 300, but there's two issues with this, The Captain refers to having assembled 300 men, plus captain and Leonidis, that makes 302, not as catchy I know. Also I'm sure the odd couple get killed off, which would then reduce the number, but possibly does round it off to the 300??
And the other thing with the accents... Pleistarchos (I think it's him), the deformed Spartan, I think runs a local shop... for local people... which was a bit off putting at times and a tad dissapointing when Steve Pemberton didn't appear in the credits.
Overall I've got a lot of time for Zack Snyder, I enjoyed the Dawn Of The Dead remake and I enjoyed this. Bring on Watchmen.
300 - 8/10
1 comment:
The story I heard was that the 300 Spartans were part of an overall army alliance of 2000 fighting the Persians. When they had to split up to fight on another front (Persians and their pesky ships) the 300 stayed behind to fight to the death, glory in battle was part of their culture and all that. "Up Pompeii" put me off ancient history forever. Oily men and a faux film style just puts me off even more .... !
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