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| Reviewed by: Chris Burton 28 Jul 2007 300
| |  I was expecting to not enjoy 300, I'll be honest. Mainly, that's because I didn't care for Sin City. I know for a lot of people that's blasphemy, but that's just how I feel. I thought it looked cool, but that's where it ended. It was like looking at a really neat comic book, but for 90 minutes. So I was expecting 300 to be all flash and no substance, to be ridiculously overrated. Don't get me wrong, there is a ridiculous amount of style in this film, but its also fun and exciting in a way that Sin City was not.
The entire movie was filmed on a green screen. Also, the entire movie is blatantly pandering to the homo-erotic and macho sensibilities in its young male audience. Its the story of 300 Spartan soldiers holding their own against an invading horde of Persians. I'm not quite sure how much of this is historically accurate. I'd be willing to bet there were many liberties taken, but that doesn't really matter. You don't see 300 for historical perspective. The entire film is pretty much a sequence of Spartan soldiers yelling about death followed by slow motion bloody battle scenes. All the blood, along with everything else, is digital. So what you get are identical blood spurts for each murder. That can get a bit annoying, but I guess it was meant to look like the graphic novel.
The film is very unique in its visual style. I assumed it would become annoying, but it kept my attention for the duration. The performances are all quite good, especially since this is a mostly "hey, its that guy" cast. My favorite performance is by Officer McNulty from The Wire who plays a scheming politician trying to bring down Sparta by making a deal with the Persians. But no deal will be made by the true Spartan warriors. They welcome the inevitability of death, and would be happy to be martyred in battle.
Anticipation is high. 300 has to be one of the best looking high-def discs ever, if not the very best. I mean, the entire movie is digital, for Christ's sake. It is made for this medium. But while it looks absolutely excellent on this disc, its status as reference material is difficult to quantify. The movie is so artificial in its design (intentionally so, of course) that truly breathtaking detail is not going to be evident. The abundance of cgi is mostly soft in its appearance, as cgi always is. Cartoons don't tend to have much detail. But these quibbles are not so important. The question that matters is whether or not this disc preserved the visual integrity of the film while at the same time improving upon it in often subtle but still significant ways. And it definitely did. The colors are beautiful, even though the movie is intentionally drab, and its always overcast. There's quite a bit of "grain" but its computer generated and artificial, and that's kind of odd. But it gives the film an added sense of "realism" or as close as you can get and its visually interesting. Blacks are absolutely astounding in every scene. Compression is not a significant issue either, even though you may be expecting it with such an effects laden film.
Audio, no quips. Unbelievably outstanding. This is one of the most immersive and active mixes I have ever heard. We get Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround, and it rollicks you out of the seat. Dynamic range is perfect. Bass is incredibly strong, sometimes maybe too strong- especially when the Persian armies are advancing. the bombastic music track sounds great, and the dialogue is crisp and clear- even though the Spartans feel it necessary to yell every single line. |
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Copyright (c) 2007 Rock Star Media Works, Inc. All rights reserved.
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