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300

(2007)

117 min. Warner Brothers. Director: Zack Snyder. Cast: Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, Michael Fassbender, Vincent Regan, Dominic West.

Sometimes a preview, against the odds, tells you exactly what to expect of the movie. Such is the case with 300, the cinematic translation of Frank Miller & Lynn Varley's graphic novel. In its unapologetically fantastic visualization of the ancient Battle of Thermopylae (between the Spartans and the Persians in 480 BCE), both the graphic novel and its faithful adaptation truly provide a spectacle—something to see—but beyond that, all bets are off.

Much as Robert Rodriguez adapted Miller's Sin City to the screen, director Zack Snyder uses the original comic book panels as essential visual touchstones; to achieve the "live-action" snapshots, Snyder filmed his actors surrounded by green screens. The director delivered a loose, unpretentious action-horror flick in his debut feature, a Dawn of the Dead remake, but 300 is a lumbering "beast" or, if you prefer, "monster."

Those terms, used ominously to describe the Persian enemy, betray the story's outsized bias in favor of the Spartans, and its patent unreality. Miller, Varley, and Snyder agree to break out literal beasts (a rhino, giant elephants) and mutant humans in an antic, Attic exaggeration of an already legendary nugget of history: how King Leonidas of Sparta and 300 men played a pivotal role in holding off a massive Persian invasion.

300 agressively paints the Persians as exotic, inglorious Others, presumably to show the subjective viewpoint of the Spartans. Xerxes (an unrecognizable Rodrigo Santoro) is everything the brave and bold Leonidas isn't: dishonorable, soft, and sexually dubious. "Today we rescue the world from mysticism and tyranny!" crows Leonidas, conveniently forgetting that his grudging visit to an oracle was an obligatory Spartan gesture.

The Spartans' harsh warrior culture forbade the sympathy and honor Homer allows for the Trojans in The Iliad, and though the film's xenophobia is consistent with Miller's source material (which predates post-9/11 demonizations), the film's release puts glamorized martial sacrifice to take down a dehumanized enemy squarely in the middle of our War on Terror. Since the film is such a blood-pumping endorsement of offense as defense, it's hard not to notice the Spartans are depicted as red-caped white guys going against noticably swarthier foes.

As compensation for his more fanciful strokes, Miller takes several of his version's most notable lines—like Queen Gorgo's exhortation "Come back with your shield or on it"—from Greek historian Herodotus and later biographer Plutarch. Gerald Butler (The Phantom of the Opera) plays Leonidas with appropriately steely focus, centered ferocity, and well-protected gloom over his certain fate. Gorgo (a properly tough Lena Headey) proves a good match, swallowing her fear and backing up her husband (the manner in which she does so includes both feminine humiliation and masculine retribution). Snyder's interpolated subplot—about Gorgo petitioning for troop support—takes Miller further from known history; in reality, the 300 Spartans weren't alone, but the pivotal forward line of a much larger force bolstered by Greek army and navy.

Stylistically, there's nothing spartan about the film. Eye-catching designs and splashy visuals reflect the visual impact of the graphic novel and the processing speed of a short-attention-span culture (like a video game, 300 has hyperbolic graphics; as in an NFL broadcast, there's frequent slo-mo better to appreciate the action). The ultimate irony is that movies like Sin City and 300, boiled down, are films for those too lazy even to turn the pages of graphic novels, which produce the original, equally arresting images for considerably fewer hundreds of millions of dollars.

As a Spartan mood piece, 300 communicates the glorification of war, and the values one sought in fighting it: honor, respect, duty, and glory. 300's selective approach to history demonstrates that its true interest isn't in anthropology so much as a timeless machismo. Snyder embraces the Greeks' exaltation of the idealized human form, and while sensual female nudity appears, it's the soldiers in leather undies who command most of the screen time. Their superheroic prowess on the battlefield defines them; emotions—though acknowledged—channel directly into a uniform expression of bloody assault (fillips of dry wit help make the crushing dread bearable). In context, it becomes reasonable to show love for family not through words but by impaling the enemy.

So what will audiences emerging from the multiplex take back with them into the 21st century? "Awesome" bloodlust and a reinforcement of retrogressive cultural attitudes. Primally, 300 has a grunting, gut impact; stirring archetypes; and the visual sweep of a projected nightmare. Primarily, it's constructed of fudged history and creative slaughtering, making it a somewhat disturbing American busman's holiday.