Zack Snyder's retelling of the famous Battle of Thermopylae does not even for a second try for historical accuracy, it is instead a horny teenager's wet dream painted luridly across the big screen. Snyder here blends the old and the new, his war fantasy is equal parts ancient Grecian Art and modern comic book aesthetic.
Every single element in this movie is over-the-top and cranked up to 11 - the odds are impossible (300 Spartan warriors against a million Persians), the war scenes splattered in non-stop blood and viscera and the testosterone raging forth as if this film has a permanent erection.
The characters are complete contrasts and raised to the level of mythology. Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) is literally a 10 feet tall god, decked in gold jewelry from head to toe and androgynous or even effeminate. Spartan Warrior-King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) on the other-hand is hyper-masculine and portrayed with such a jaw-droppingly muscular and shredded physique that he looks like a Greek God himself, even though he's mortal.
For a war film, Snyder builds dramatic tension very successfully in the first half through tense exchanges between Leonidas and Persian/Spartan statesmen as Persia invades Greece. But once it explodes into all-out war, the film becomes an action fans dream and stages one brilliantly-choreographed and dazzlingly-executed action set-piece after another. This is seriously some of the best fantasy action ever committed to screen – coherent, imaginative and brutal.
This is most certainly the most beautiful film by Snyder – it literally bursts with luscious saturated color and tangible textures. Ostensibly shot in a single blue room with no sets, every backdrop and even entire cities and armies were added digitally by a horde of special effects artists. The results are both extremely artificial and vividly dream-like - every frame is a piece of Greek Art or comic book frame that can be put in a museum.
You might think that the actors are a bit lost amid all the war frenzy and CGI trickery, and that is true of some of the supporting actors. Not Gerard Butler though, who in a role of life-time, seizes the part by its horns and gives a truly towering, monumental and film-elevating performance. This is surely one of the most over-whelmingly uber-macho performances in the history of cinema, Butler's Leonidas is the alpha male to end all alpha males.
When you see him hero-walking at the head of the Spartan army, flexing his huge muscles and roaring like a lion with blood-curdling fury (Leonidas means lion), it is difficult not to get warm in the blood and join the answering Spartan war-cry. Butler is the perfect match for Snyder's sensibilities in this regard, he completely gets the material, the tone Snyder is aiming for and isn't afraid to give a big, dialed-to-11 performance. Butler literally roars every single line with a deep manly Scottish baritone but such is the passion and intensity of his performance that none of the lines sound ridiculous, they instead sound like great-one liners that make memorable quotes on t-shirts.
You cannot talk about Butler's epic performance without talking about his iconic look. Butler, sporting close to no fat, is ripped beyond belief, showing bulging eight-pack-abs and muscles so elaborately sculpted that he once and for all raised the bar on what is possible for an action hero to look like. Audiences gasped in astonishment and media widely speculated that his physique was CGI but don't be fooled folks, it's all real and there's never been a more cut leading man in the movies. This is again a melding of the old and the new – Butler's used modern bodybuilding to bring together classical Greek sculpture (aesthetic proportions and every single muscle developed to perfection) and comic book aesthetic (muscle definition so intense it makes your eyes water). He is essentially the perfect masculine ideal here - complete with his enormous beard and cropped haircut.
Snyder invokes the classical concept of 'heroic nudity' in that Butler appears almost fully nude, wearing only a leather codpiece, to relentlessly flaunt his physique throughout the film. Butler's nude Spartan look contrasts with the fully clothed Persian soldiers, and further distinguishes the virile Spartans soldiers for their immense courage, war culture and military might, showing they have nothing to hide even in battle. These pumped-up Spartan soldiers look physically perfect and help the audience to believe the movie's premise that it is not only possible but even likely that the Spartans will defeat the Persians.
On the battlefield Butler cuts an intimidating and terrifying figure, looking like an anatomy chart as every muscle ripples and strains with the war effort to wreak carnage on the enemy. In one unforgettable single take sequence, he becomes the god of war himself as he mercilessly massacres dozens of Persians in a single charge (the best cinematic representation of Homeric war imagery). The scene is both shockingly violent and crazy bad-ass, now a classic of the action genre.
Butler aces even his extended dialog scenes with his entertaining and exciting screen presence and off-the-charts charisma. Make no mistake, his cocky Leonidas is not an ideal bench-pressing bicep-curling gym-jock (though he is impossibly buff), he is an incredibly intelligent and shrewd tactician as well as a powerful orator. Towards the end of the film, one is surprised to be even moved by his performance. Leonidas is unapologetic, uncompromising and blatantly arrogant but also fearless, gutsy and heroic and Butler here has pulled off the impossible trick of being both HeMAN and HuMAN in a single film.
Snyder, buoyed by Butler's aggressive performance, delivers a tightly focused narrative that delivers the thrills, and gets out while still ahead. It remains his best and most exciting work and leaves hope that he might return to the glories of this triumph in his under comic book undertakings.
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