300

I finally got round to watching '300' last night.

My opinion of it is the same as that of 'Sin City' (also based on a Frank Millar comic and utilising CGI backgrounds) – stylish, but ultimately a bit empty.

As with films like 'The Matrix', the violence here (while bloody) is entirely choreographed and highly stylised, giving the impression more of dance than warfare. Through the magic of CGI, the screen is soon full of flying limbs and copious splatters of blood. As with 'Sin City' there's more than a hint of sadism in the various battle scenes, as death and mutilation is portrayed in loving detail. After the first couple of battles however, I found myself getting increasingly bored.

The crucial weakness of the film, for me, was that, aside from a natural sympathy for the underdog, I didn't really find myself rooting for the Spartans. The characters have no real depth and no real personality beyond banging on about honour and family.

The depiction of Spartan society also failed to ring true. I don't believe that films like this have a duty to accurately represent the events they depict. All fiction works on a metaphorical level. So while I think that all the “Spartan” rhetoric about “free men” and “liberty” rang hollow, it's purely because it conflicts with what we see of their society in the film itself. It's a bit hard to take Leonides' talk about freedom seriously when he's king of a society in which children are forcibly taken from their parents aged seven (and then put through a brutal military training programme) and priests are allowed young women as slaves.

Maybe it's a bit much to expect a realistic portrayal of ancient Sparta in an action film. But if you don't care about the people you're watching then no amount of technology can save it.

So all-in-all: Interesting, but not something I'd make an effort to watch again.