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Life & Arts

Gory ë300í bleeds ó and leads

Besides being a bloody war story, film captivates the audience with grandeur

by CHRIS ELLIOTT
The Daily Cougar

Fight sequences --ó they are non-negotiable essentials in the modern-era action movie. So much time, money and choreography are put into the scenes because directors and producers know that a spectacular fight scene can give a motion picture the edge it needs to make it the next blockbuster and lacking battles will likely result with the House of the Dead treatment: avoid by all means necessary.

The Spartans were heralded as masters of war, demi-gods in the art of hand-to-hand combat and men who found glory in dying for their country. 300, the film based off of the graphic novel by Frank Miller in which 300 Spartans fought to the death against a seemingly endless Persian army, illustrates the Spartans in a domineering light which will leave viewers cowering in the name of the once great country.

300 may very well have set an unreachable bar for the rest of the movie industry, with its dramatic, chaotic and captivating fight sequences.

Kudos to Damon Caro, the fight choreographer and coordinator of 300. He somehow found the perfect combination of brutality and agility to create some of the most horrifically beautiful battles ever seen on the big screen. 

Behind the iron shields, hulk-like men hold their ground, spears ready to strike in their dominant hands. The Spartan King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) is there in the thick of things on the front line. The Persian army has the numbers, though. It tries to force its way upon the 300 with a frontal attack.

Heels digging into the ground, the front line of the small Spartan army first thrust their shields forward, sending hundreds of puny Persians flying backward, then without warning they stab. Their spears slice through Persian flesh. Blood spurts at first through the exit wound, but the camera does not focus on that. As time slows down, the audienceís eyes are drawn to a red stained and dripping spear before it is retracted and prepared to kill again.

Soon the first wave of the Persian army begins to cower and retreat, and all hell breaks loose. Limbs fly, heads roll and muscular men wearing red war tunics that show off their six packs fight off what is said to be an unstoppable army led by King Xerxes, the rather feminine-looking ruler of the Persian Empire that threatens to invade Greece. 

300ís first battle scene, very briefly described above illustrated the sheer intimidation that the Spartans gave on the battlefield and in the movie. Even though you knew the 300 soldiers would all perish in the end, it was a complete shock when it actually happened. In fact, it was more surprising to see Leonidas fall to his death, arrows protruding from his body, than it was to see nudity and sex scenes in the movie. 

It may seem odd that the Spartans only brought 300 soldiers to fight against an army that had already conquered hundreds of other nations, but Leonidas was forced to do so. Bound by laws in the hands of a corrupt elite, he cannot mobilize the entire Spartan army.

With his countryís best interests in mind, the Spartan king assembled his own ìbody guardî and sets out for an ideological victory. 

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