300

By: Martyn Pedler
Date: 28th Mar 07
Format: Cinema
Mood: Epic

What:
300

Where:
Everywhere from the Kino Dendy to IMAX

When:
Opens April 5

Watch the trailer:
Here

300 is a film that’s so stylish, so hyperbolic, its heroes might as well be fighting with exclamations points instead of spears. And you can choose: if you're curious about 300 for its comic-book cred and bold visual experimentation, you can see it at one of Melbourne's smaller arthouse cinemas. If you’re there for men hacking each otherto pieces in slow motion while heavy-metal guitar plays, you can go seeit at IMAX. You’ll giggle inappropriately either way.

Frank Miller's vaguely-historical comic of 300 Spartans fighting an entire Persian army in 480 BC is so swift and brutal that it's almost schematic – and so, unlike the last Miller adaptation Sin City, 300 can’t be so slavish to its source material. Fidelity is often a handicap, as the movie retains narration that was needed in the comic but is redundant here, and results in a pointless narrator who will Just. Not. Shut. Up.

300 might be cynical about religion and politics, but it is unashamedly, ridiculously, pro-war. Can you channel your inner15-year-old old boy and convince yourself that war is awesome! long enough to enjoy the hypnotic, striking, sometimes even jaw-dropping spectacle it provides?