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"300" Presents a dual clash of civilizations. An action adventure that pits thousands of Persians against 300 brave Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae, it also pits millions of fans of brainless violence against a gallant band, or so I choose to think of us, who still expect movies to contain detectable traces of humanity. The oracles have already foretold which side will win this weekend's Battle of the Box Office.
Like "Sin City" before it, "300" was adapted from a graphic novel by Frank Miller, and uses digital techniques, as well as a palette of doomy-dreary tones, to fill the screen with striking images--massed armies, huddled phalanxes, piled corpses, loathsome monsters, a tree of death. (The director was Zack Snyder, and the production designer was James Bissell.) The giant-screen IMAX version, to which I unwittingly subjected myself, ups the ante from striking to assaulting--so many depictions of impalements, eviscerations, amputations and graphic beheadings that you don't know what to worry about the most, the body count or the head count. Being a Spartan, the movie tells us, was about pride, pecs, and abs. Being a Persian was about leering, body piercing, and, particularly in the case of the bass-boosted Xerxes, bejeweled preening; his costume would be a stunner on any runway in the modern world.
~Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal
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