BLUE MAG

“THIS IS SPARTA!” After watching the trailer to Zak Snyder’s adaptation of Frank Miller’s comic “300,” I wondered if everything in the movie was going to be said in all caps with exclamation points: “I AM EATING A SANDWICH!” “I AM GOING OVER THERE!” In many ways I hoped this would be the case, a movie that could sustain that level of intensity for two hours would be quite an achievement. Unfortunately, “300” is full of people speaking at a normal volume and after a while loses its intensity and this viewer’s attention.

“300” retells the story of the Battle of Themopylae, where 300 Spartans and a sparse group of allies (7,000ish by some historian’s account) held the line against a vast army for several crucial days. If you’re going for a lesson on Greek history … uh have you seen the trailer? There is very little if anything resembling reality going on in the film. It was shot almost completely in front of green screens and just about every frame of film was altered with CGI. This melding of technology leads to some of the most beautiful things I’ve seen. The first ten minutes took my breath away watching these painterly slow motion sequences and I thought to myself, “I could watch this all day.” Forty minutes in I was looking at my watch so obviously I can’t watch just pretty pictures all day.

Ultimately that’s what “300” reduces to: pretty pictures. I found myself recalling the Shakespeare quote “Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” and that sums the film up. That’s not to say there aren’t some great things in it: Snyder and his visual effects crew do as good a job as “Sin City” in recreating Frank Miller and Lynn Varney’s images, Gerard Butler as King Leonidas has some wonderful scenery chewing moments, David Wenham is particularly good as Dilios our narrator, Lena Headey makes a very sexy queen and there’s some visually great action sequences. But the film doesn’t have staying power and after a while your mind starts wandering. Worst of all, for a film that’s essentially supposed to be escapist entertainment you find yourself unable to escape. All that said it’s hard not to recommend “300” because the visuals are just so damn good, I just wish it had the content to warrant them.