James’ Blog

James' take: A Must See and Own the DVD!

Do you know when you see a new movie trailer, and you get the sense of the movie? If you're gonna like it or not?

I hated 300's trailer. Watching it, I rolled my eyes and thought "what a waste of film". Even though something intangible in the trailer picked my interest, my initial thought was "no way, Jose". It seemed like too much visual, not enough everything else.
Thing is, I live in Brazil (for now), and movies take some time to get here. By the time 300 did, it was already making a lot of noise in the US, and so I went on the opening. And I was blown away.

300 is an excellent film. Gripping, exciting, believable. Yes. That too. Of course, I don't mean literally, but the characters are believable. I read or heard somewhere, maybe on The Answer Bitch podcast, that some director said that the most important thing is character motivation. I agree wholeheartedly. If you believe and understand why the character does what he does, then the movie works. The characters in 300 are easy to understand, have clear motivation, and are interesting. They have unexpected subtleties you wouldn't expect in such a movie. That made the movie very compelling to me.
Gerard Butler did such an amazing job as King Leonidas, I became a fan. He provided the intended Frank Miller intensity, while keeping the character grounded and even real.

And so we get to the action. Great action in this film. But action is only interesting when the audience is emotionally vested in the characters. When you root for someone. When is happerns, you have magic, and it's clearly the case here.

Later on, intrigued by this movie portraying a historical event, I went online to research the Battle of Thermopylae. I was shocked! Shocked to see that the movie is amazingly accurate, historically speaking. Everything from the part about the Oracle, to the battle, including tactical formations, weapons used, who said what, who did what, conforms to historic records. That is simply outstanding, and raises this movie up another notch. Incredibly, it is a much more historically accurate movie than The Last King of Scotland (amazing job by Forrest Whitaker, by the way).

Finally, I couldn't end this without talking about Frank Miller. I'm not a conoisseur of his work or his style. I've seen Sin City, now I've seen 300, and I used to read a lot of comics as a kid. But that's it. And what I can say is this:
His over-the-top style worked very well for this movie. It made good characters become bigger than life, and it added to the wonder without taking from the suspension of disbelief.  All the aspects of this movie work well together, and enhance one another. This is not only a must-see movie, but also a must-have-the-dvd one.