300 - The Movie

As mentioned in my earlier Blog, I recently saw the much in talk movie 300. Although I wanted to see it on Imax, the tickets and shows were far and between leading me to settle for the normal screen. As a pre-cursor to the hype related to the movie, I read up the wikipedia posts related to it. This movie has been made from a graphic novel also known by the same name. As a good History student in school, (for those of you who did not know me back then, I had once contemplated a career in archeology) I was intrigued by the amazing quality of the post and how it got me involved in this 'against the odds' fight.

Having said that, my reading exercise also let me form my expectations for the movie to be a fantasy kind of a historic and not an out and out historical account of the battle. The one thing that came out of the comments made by the makers was that It was a literal conversion of the graphic novel. So those of you who are wanting a gripping authentic account of the battle and era, you would be disappointed. For the real account refer this

Now lets get to the real deal, the movie itself. For a person who likes action movies, this one does not let you down. Even if you leave out the rest of the movie and watch the battle scenes, you would be treated to your money's worth or more. The skill of the Spartan soldiers is hyped to super human proportions and the 6 packs on each one of them, holds testimony to this claim. (btw if you felt this was done using special effects, think again.... Look at this routine for the actors who played Spartan soldiers). The movie seems more like an opera than a movie and has the same kind of aura about it. This is established by the over-emphasized dialogues like 'This is Sparta' or 'Remember Us' or 'Tonight we dine in Hell'....They are loud and spine chilling in some cases. King Leonidus has a distinct Maximus (of gladiator fame) hangover and lives up to the comparison.
There is nothing that really surprised me in the movie as the story is small and predictable. The best scene for me was the war scene with the Immortals wherein the Spartans use the dead bodies of the earlier parts of the Persian contingent. (Well the sight of the Oracle comes close to being my favorite too...ah what a sight!!!)

Now lets get to the flip side! The war depicted against the Persian Empire or the 1000 Kingdoms of Asia seems like a bit of a deja vu in the reverse chronology considering the current state of the world. And I hope it doesn't give the viewers the wrong view of the people from that region. Also, the battle scenes though spell-binding, do not get you emotionally attached to the Spartan soldiers. And as said earlier, there wasn't any attempt at making this a realistic tale. The 'Lord of the Rings' kind of effects and characters are entertaining and eeeky at different moments in the movie. All in all a movie worth watching once. Not a collectible though.