OK so yesterday we caught a 'girlie show'. Today, it was my turn to pick the movie and of course it had to be a macho 'boy show'. Bring it on!, the blood and chopped limbs and kewl armor with red capes and swash-buckling (err maybe spear twirling) Greek models and all that macho preening and posing with 8-pack abs and all...
And in what better way then to catch the CGI-ed tale of the epic battle at Thermopylae where 300 Spartans, led by a bushy-bearded King Leonidas, battled the rag-tag but frighteningly horde-ish army of Persian King Xerxes.
I can't say this is a fantastic movie. Enjoyable yes but certainly not fantastic. I mean from the moment I heard that it was shot mostly on blue and green screens, it put me off a little. Well if Peter Jackson could go on location in NZ when he was doing LOTR, surely even with CGI, 300 director Zack Synder could spare us the fake looking backdrops and city-scapes =)) But at least it was not as fakey as Sky Captain and The World of Tommorrow. That one was saved, barely, by the inimitable Jude Law and of course everybody's favorite UN-Adopt-a-Child-Mudder Angelina Jolie.
But I digress.
The cast of 300, I don't remember seeing anywhere. Gerard Butler as King Leonidas. Yes I hear you...Gerard who? =)) The rest of the Spartans, at least those who had significant air-time anyway, I also don't remember seeing anywhere else. But my oh my, when you look at them in their red capes and spears with shields and all, you know they have been working out. OK this is an understatement, they all look like Greek Gods! And I don't mean Venus hor, more like Zeus =)) 300 will surely go into the Guinness Book of Records as the Movie With The Most Number Of Killer Abs In A Single Frame =))
Then there is Persian King Xerxes. You know I'm really bad with history but My Goodness!, are you sure a Persian King looks like that? How shall I put it, he's...erm...really Alternative.
What with nose rings, facial piercings, a bald head, kohl-circled eyes and shimmery thongs, he looks like Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow in Patpong-gone-wrong transvestite drag =)) And holy moley, guess who plays the Persian Pervert? Rodrigo Santoro. Yes the same Brazilian hunk in Love Actually that Laura Linney has the hots for and the good 'ole crash-surviving Paulo in Lost. The transformation is...yikes...horrid =))
But 300, actually the real Battle of Thermopylae rather, has real lessons for us in modern warfare. This point has of course been expounded upon by many a military historian. The importance of good trained soldiers, clever use of terrain and tactics, teamwork and courageous sacrifice is available for learning in copious amounts.
So barring the slow dialogue in the beginning, a tit or two that had the 'pre-pubescent' audience ooh-ing and ahh-ing, the Matrix-copied slow-motion stylised fight scenes (but with flying cut-a-way heads and limbs) and a tad shallow personalization of the characters in the movie, 300 was immensely watchable
lah.
Just don't ask the Chimp what happened in the first 20mins. She fell asleep =))
7/10
Labels: Movies