Tomtainment

Tomalysis300300 (2006)

Take that, black people!

300 is a movie that got made because Sin City did well enough to warrant doing more movies based on Frank Miller comics. I don't particularly care about Frank Miller and have pretty much decided I don't need to read his stuff because, thanks to the precedent set by Robert Rodriguez, the films that use his work as a basis feel like they follow so friggin' closely to the source material, that reading them at this point seems fairly fruitless.

PLOT

I can't spoil the plot because THANK GOD THERE ISN'T ONE. All you really need to know is this: the Persians want to enslave the Spartans. The Spartans disagree and therefore decide to kill a lot of the Persians. That's it! Plot is done faster than you can microwave a Pop Tart! And I was happy that the director knew exactly what this was: a visually impressive action flick. The message here was a simple one and rather than blasting you with a lot of weak characterization they got the basics out of the way and then just let you have fun with the rest of the movie. Is it a classic? By no means, but it is a fun little popcorn flick and it was designed to be as such. This film is for guys who like hot chicks, tough cheerable heroes (not Xena grrrl power heroines) and fighting!

At first it did take itself seriously, but then a bunch of people got killed and then some humor got injected into the mix, so I was appeased. At heart, this is what action movies are supposed to be. The good guys don’t whine and complain when they lose, nor do they have fatal character flaws. “I have hatred in my heart,” says the despairing captain at one point. “Good.” is the reply from the king, and everyone in the theater agrees. Now someone’s gonna get their ass kicked even more. The movie is like a full-on, two hour ***** brawl.

PROS

The fight scenes are wonderfully violent, so completely over-the-top in a way that I’ve been waiting for a movie to do for a long time but no one had the guts to go for until now. The narration and dialogue is almost as ludicrous as the fighting, but by god, I was nearly inspired to go out and slaughter me some Persians, so it worked. This may be the manliest movie ever made and it wasn't afraid to be un-PC. I also liked the cartoony blood effects they used. It worked well and looked nifty, although they also made things far less cringe-inducing.

This movie basically combines everything I love about everything else and really they should have called it “300 things that Tom has wanted to see in a movie for years” because there’s so much in there to love.

The Persian ninjas were also pretty cool. Too bad they weren't that strong. If only they called on those Japanese ninjas. Then it would've been interesting. But still, Persian ninjas sure looked cool.

I also liked the heavy metal during the battle scenes. So what if the music isn't historically correct? It went from mystical Enya-ish music to crunchy hard rock and I loved it.

CONS

Dude nudity. While there were some naked women in this film, almost every naked woman scene had a muscular dude giving the screen an ass picnic.

I didn't really enjoy the 'queen fights with politicians' sub-plot, since it was obviously there just as a break between the fighting.

REMARKS

To paraphrase Richard Roeper, if you thought Gladiator needed better battle scenes and Sin City needed more style, this is the movie for you. I will not forget this one for a long, long time. Easily one of my favorite movies, and this is a movie that people should show to motivate soldiers or football players.

It really Should've been called 14, because between the blood, body count, boobs, and bluster about manliness and not taking any shit, this was like an adolescent boy's dream. A wet, bloody dream.

Go see Oceans 13 if you want a bunch of pretty boys. You get guys with dirt under their nails in 300. Basically, this movie is to dudes what Sleepless in Seattle is to chicks.

I'd go ****.