300

What a colossal waste of time, money and effort!!

I went to watch this movie last night. The hype behind it was overpowering. The choices that we had when we got to the movie theater was "The Wild Hogs", "The Ghost Rider", "The Zodiac" or "300". Frankly, with hindsight I now think we should have gone with either the "Ghost Rider" or "Wild Hogs". Either would have been more fun than what we had to go through for an hour and half with 300.

Don't get me wrong, the visuals are stunning, the tone great, the music haunting, the actors and actresses - eye candy with their torso rippling with muscle, the women nubile and erotic. It's the outright theme and politics of the movie that I disagree with.

Now, according to the movie, all Spartan boys are selected at birth for their physical strength, size etc and then trained to become psychopathic killers, not much unlike the child soldiers from the more horrible wars of Africa, Asia and maybe in some instances Nepal. And yet this is a noble thing to do, something to do with a warrior code - this is something that I have never really understood - the warrior code, bravery, valor, glory, art of war and the like shit. Probably something to with the fact that I come from a family of peace loving priests. By the way, what if the kid did not want to become a warrior in the first place and preferred to be a musician? But still, all professions, except the soldiers are beneath the Spartans. We are painfully made aware about that.

Now that we have a bunch of psychopaths, they develop this society that's based on equality, justice, truth and in a huge sense of superiority over other societies, even the local Greek societies. They have a working democracy, with elected council members and of course the "corrupt" politicians. Why does every second politician in Hollywood's eyes have to be corrupt? And oh, did I mention that the priests are also corrupt - now this I take personally!! But the King! ah, he is wise and valiant and non-corruptible and fights for truth, justice and the Am.... uh.... Spartan way.

The bad guys are Persians, who send slaves to fight. Their best fighters, the "ghost guard" are mere brawlers compared to the Spartans. And since they send slaves to fight - the Persians - cannot fight with as much heart as the "free" Spartans do. And evidently, the Spartans know that "freedom does not come free". Now would someone please take the time to explain what people mean with that phrase? It's a remarkable catch phrase someone has come up with. It has equal punch, if not more, as the words patriotism, liberty, truth, justice, equality...... and somehow, no one knows what it exactly means. People use that line in the same manner that one would use a liberal dose of ketchup in a hot-dog.

By the end of the movie, I was rooting for the Persians to win. I doubt that this was the intention of the director or the storyteller. The story would be appealing to a red-blooded 17 year old warrior, but for anyone with half a brain, well, the one dimensional characters and the storyline is just an insult.

I would have accepted the premise of the story had they told the story without taking sides, somehow trying to show the Spartan society as all that is good in the world and the Persians as slave owners and followers of "Mysticism" and "Tyranny" - read Iran - as the Axis of Evil.

And if you still have appetite for more and the time, do follow the link and listen to the show on NHPR. http://www.nhpr.org/node/12388