300 - zack snyder - 5.5 / 10

For all its digital fire and brimstone and the lip service it pays to the Spartan warrior ethic and code of honorable death, it’s a damn shame that at its core 300 turns out to be so staunchly conservative and puritanical, its warrior heroes dying with cries for their wives and children on their lips. And what’s truly baffling here is that that stuff isn’t in the graphic novel upon which this film is based (neither is the ridiculous legislative maneuvering going on back in Sparta but that’s another matter I’ll get to later) and it certainly isn’t historically accurate. Now I’m no advocate of being a slave to the written source or even to history. But when changes are made recklessly and wantonly, all you get is a very conflicted message.

So, on the one hand you have the buff and oiled male model Spartans declaring their goal of glorious death in combat. And on the other you have them crying over their dead children and missing their wives. If the former attitude were true, then they would have faced their deaths willingly and even gladly. If the latter attitude were true then they would have left the battlefield at the first sign that they had been outflanked. You can’t have it both ways without completely muddling the whole thing.

History suggests that Leonidas received a message from the Oracle at Delphi telling him that either Sparta would mourn a king (one of two but never mind) or that all of Sparta would be lost. The Spartans were a deeply religious people and that message combined with the warrior code that had been ingrained in Leonidas since he was a small child would surely have lead him to embrace his death thinking that he had saved Sparta from destruction. And at his final moments he would have had no thoughts of his wife or anything other than the eternal glory that surely awaited him as the savior of his city-state. To suggest otherwise is both disingenuous and contradictory.

Thus, it becomes clear that co-writer / director Zack Snyder has no handle on the subtext of his gloriously violent slow-mo epic. Further, it seems that all he was interested in was making the prettiest piece of violence he could. Coming from the advertising world as he does, maybe that’s not surprising. But the story as it existed on the page was so strong and clear that all he had to do was tell it exactly as it appeared. Instead he manufactured scenes out of whole cloth and made additions where none were needed. And it is in these changes that the film ultimately fails. Without them it could have been a decent (though completely subtext free) couple hours of violence porn. Instead it’s a muddle of conflicting themes and messages and full of dull passages of court intrigue and parliamentary posturing.

Now, about that legislative maneuvering, the thing that really irks me about it is not that it’s not in the book or even that it’s ridiculous but rather that it’s completely historically inaccurate. Sparta had two kings, one to lead the army and the other to rule the state. There was no legislature or other governing body. That sort of democratic rule was strictly the province of Athens. Maybe Snyder and Co. got the Spartans confused with the Romans and thought they needed some scenes in the Roman Senate. But the fiercely militaristic Spartans could never have stood for such nonsense. And to have them do so in the film is to be grossly ignorant both of history and of the people about whom you're telling this story. It’s irresponsible and, ultimately, just infuriating.

But that’s exactly Snyder’s problem. Every time he attempts to make this film about anything other than the nifty computer effects and camera tricks that make it look so darn pretty, he walks right into a wall of contradiction. He has no command of his subtext and no idea of what he’s actually saying. Thus, all we’re left with at the end of the film are the oh so pretty pictures. But after two hours of them, even the prettiest picture can’t hold your attention.