intestines stomach

I remember the first time I saw the trailer, which was playing right before The Departed back in October. The man responsible for 300 is also the man responsible for Sin City, which is easily one of the greatest comic book adaptations to film that I have ever seen. I know that is a bold statement, but please find me a more faithful adaptation to a comic book. It probably also helped that Frank Miller co-directed Sin City with Robert Rodriguez.

This time around, Miller did not have anything to do with the filming of 300. Even though Miller was not co-directing, it still turned out to be an EXTREMELY faithful adaptation of the graphic novel. There are AMAZING similarities between a screen shot from the film and a page in the graphic novel. Zach Snyder, who was responsible for the Dawn of the Dead remake, directed 300 which has a non-familiar cast. The person that most people may recognize is Gerard Butler, who plays the lead role 300. You may recognize his roll as the phantom in The Phantom of the Opera. I want somebody to tell me where this dude worked out to get those insane muscles. I am not gay or anything, but that dude was freaking ripped. Trust me; it is hard to look away from his abs.

The Plot: If you have seen the trailers, the story line is rather simple. The flick is a FICTIONALIZED account of the battle which took place back in 480 B.C. where 300 Spartans took on an army of over a million Persians. The battle did really take place, so that part is true. What we are seeing is an extremely stylized version of that story.

The flick opens up, just like the graphic novel, explaining the birth of Spartan children and how they grow up. These Spartan children were raised to be warriors and to never betray their country. They are raised to love and support Sparta. The one child they happened to focus on becomes the king of Sparta.

King Leonidas, played by Gerard Butler, is visited one day by a group of Persian messengers who seek "land and water" from the Spartans. King Leonidas knows that the Persians have already been denied by other countries. The Persian messenger threatens the Spartans that millions of Persian's are ready to destroy Sparta if they do not comply. As you have seen in the trailer, King Leonidas kicks the Persian down into that dark circle pit. This apparently was a very bad idea on the Spartans fault because it basically meant that they were going to war with the Persians.

I don't want to get into too much detail, but King Leonidas rounds up 300 of his best Spartan warriors to fight against these millions of Persian soldiers. The main problem, other than the fact that they were outnumbered, was that the Persians went to war without the permission of the countries council. Since Sparta did not back the King's plan to go to war, no other troops were sent along to fight. The amazing thing about this story is how long the 300 Spartans lasted against the Persians. Prepare yourself for EXTREMELY cool action scenes and extreme violence. You will see limbs and heads flying all over the place.

The Review: Overall, 300 is the exact definition of a 5 BDK rating. This is because of all its fast paced action and loud battle scenes. You have to see it on the big screen with a surround system. The movie is extremely beautiful to look at stretched across that big movie theatre screen.

Like Sin City, it is HIGHLY stylized and just really neat to look at. The way the blood splattered in 300 looked amazing. I was reading somewhere that they tried to keep that as true to the graphic novel as possible. If you happened to be a book store one day, pick the up graphic novel and look how close it is to the movie. All the sounds of the spears going into people's chests and the sounds of people's limbs being cut-off are all caught on that movie theatre surround sound. Let me say this right now. THIS MOVIE IS EXTREMELY VIOLENT and GRAPHIC. I am talking about limbs and heads flying all over the place and blood everywhere. MY KIND OF MOVIE! They combine all that with a very decent story.

Was the movie perfect? No. Was it extremely entertaining? Yes. The only problems that I saw were some minor pacing issues where it became a little slow at times. I found myself sitting there waiting for the battles to come on. That is really what people want to see because the trailers mainly focus on them. Wait until you see the scene when the Persians fire thousands of arrows at the Spartans during one of the earlier battles in the film. That seriously took my breath away. You will see why.

The Verdict: This is an extremely beautiful looking film and DEFINITLY deserves to be seen on the big screen, hence the 5 BDK rating.