Starring: Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, Rodrigo Santoro, Dominic West
Director: Zack Snyder
Category: IIB
Less than three months in and the candidate for most controversial film of the year has arrived already. A faithful adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel about a small band of Spartans defending their turf against invading Persians, 300 is so over the top in its violence and so ambivalent in its ideology that it's bound to generate debate.
With lines such as 'Tonight, we dine in hell' and 'Give them nothing, and take from them everything' - only two of the many testosterone-fuelled injunctions Sparta's warrior-king Leonidas (Gerard Butler) bellows at his soldiers - director Zack Snyder is obviously determined to play to the young male demographic by conjuring glory out of slow-motion bloodbaths and unfettered heroism. The film is certainly visually arresting. Colouring the on-screen action with a gritty and grainy hue, Snyder has coaxed disturbing beauty out of Miller's dark themes.
The legend of the Battle of Thermopylae lends enormous power to 300. In Miller's version of events, Leonidas sets off with just 300 fighters in the hope of halting the enemy's march into Greece. Three days of gory skirmishes follow as the Spartans fight off onslaughts (from ordinary soldiers, grotesque giants, magic in the form of primitive bombs and a battalion of masked warriors called the Immortals) before succumbing to Persian military might.