Frenchy’s Fracas

General Info
Title: 300
Year: 2007

In Short
191 BC - Persian God-King Xerxes comes to Greece and brings along all of his human and sub-human fighter slave army to conquer the place. Everybody’s shaking in their boots except King Leonidas of the Spartans. He will stop the mighty invaders with his small non-sanctioned army of just 300 men.

It’s a comic book!
Yep, sorry for all those with a fixed opinion about the genre, but 300 is a comic book, written and illustrated by one of the greats of the biz: Frank Miller.
The story isn’t his of course, it’s his interpretation of the legendary Battle of Thermopylae. And mister Miller does love his fighting stories..

The Movie
Visuals
Kaboom! From the opening scene to the closing titles: Kaboom! You get blown away.
Now, after quite some years of over the top computer graphics, you’d think you’d be kinda done seeing the stuff, but the way the effects are applied in this movie is incredible. What I really liked was the dark-brown ancient feeling they used and while you know it’s all fake, you get to enjoy a great suspension of disbelief, visuals-wise.

Plot
Ah.. well.. Not much to say: a small band of heroes fighting of a way, waaaaaay larger group of “evil men”. Hey, everybody roots for the underdog. It’s classical (no pun intended) storytelling - not really great in quality, but just a great bedtime story adventure thingy. Works for me.
There was even some political commotion from Iranian politicians and commentators that the movie was vilifying the Persians (Iran’s ancestors) - which was funny, I guess..

Cast
Not really any performances that stand out - the cast does work hard in realizing director Zack Snyder’s vision.

Conclusion
I enjoyed the movie coz I got what I expected: over the top macho muscle entertainment without any real heavy cerebral challenges. But that’s what some blasphemers think of Spartacus..
It’s also a comic book made to a movie and like Miller’s previous movie success, Sin City, you can sense the comic book feeling that dominates the movie. And that’s a tough job to accomplish, kudos.
I read that Snyder’s working on the filming of the movie version of Alan Moore’s in-frigging-credible Watchmen and judging by his work on 300, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. Just a little bit..

Rating: (remember the Trojans Spartans)

Share This

General Info
Title: Sin City
Year: 2005

In Short
Dark place called Basin “Sin” City.. Three stories from a naked city; naked coz it tends to strip every subtle layer of human decency to show us the real nature of people.. Brutal violence, tough and lovely babes, corrupt cops and politicians and clergy and so many other sinners.. And a few people with nothing to lose and with some decency left in them..
Well, so much for the Raymond Chandler style of writing..

It’s a comic book!
Yep, sorry for all those with a fixed opinion about the genre, but Sin City is a comic book, written and illustrated by one of the greats of the biz: Frank Miller.
This guy’s helped the comics biz with his incredible reboot of the Batman character in “Dark Knight Returns”. His work on Daredevil “The Man Without Fear” also is a classic work of comics art.
With Sin City, Miller took us back to the genre of gritty and dark detective books and movies from the thirties thru fifties.

The Movie
Visuals
Well, Miller waited for quite a while before ever accepting offers to make a movie out of this book and one of the reasons, I imagine, was his serious attention to graphic detail and atmosphere.
With current CGI techniques and with one of the masters of said methods, Robert Rodriguez, directing the movie you know you can’t go wrong! The attention to detail matches that of the book in putting accross a dark world of sin and violence.
Like in the book the graphics are needed to convey this feeling of dread and utter desolation. The movie is almost a perfect technical copy of that and succeeds to get away with that, without boring the viewer with “look how dazzling this CGI is” kind of work..

Plot
Don’t expect anything other than crime pulp stories from this movie; three stories that sometimes interlink but are entertaining enough individually: a cop in the last days of his carreer tries to protect an innocent girl from the homocidal son of an influential politician - a tough guy taking revenge for the murder of the only woman who ever showed him love and compassion - another tough guy cought up in the beginnings of an all-out war between crime gangs and cops.
They’re all entertaining and sometimes even touching, but almost always violent and full of machismo: absolutely perfect inner child material for most men! Heheh..

Cast
The cast consists an incredible selection of performers:
The Men: back from the dead Mickey Rourke, veteran Bruce Willis, newcomer and here to stay Clive Owen
The Women: hubbahubba Jessica Alba, the weird Devon Aoki and the incredible Rosario Dawson
The Nice Surprises: the ever offbeat Benicio Del Toro, the Dutch Master Rutger Hauer and the blast from the past Powers Boothe.
All these people are totally devoted to deliver a great performance and many successfully achieve this goal.
Conclusion
I’m what is called a fanboy when it comes to comic books; been reading them books for most of my life and been collecting them for more than fifteen years. (Now that’s great confession to make, heheh..)
So when I heard this was gonna be a film I sort of started to get a bit nervous about the outcome. When I heard who were writing, directing and acting, I felt a bit more calm and started to get excited about the end result. When the first trailers and such were shown I really started to get all mushy inside!
Now that I finally got to see it: One Happy Puppy! Incredible movie with new ways of telling old stories.

Rating: (and a goddamn fistfull of bullets more)

Share This