I have expressed reservations about seeing 300, which is being released this Friday. But now that I've read Nathan Lee's review in The Village Voice, I will definitely go!
Here are some excerpts from Lee's "Man on Man Action":
Tolerate the lobotomized dialogue and some half-assed political intrigues and you'll find a good 10 minutes of 300 worth posting on YouTube. You can never go wrong with rampaging battle elephants. Throw in a war-rhino, some silver-masked ninja magicians, and an 8-foot-tall godking who looks like RuPaul beyond the Thunderdome (Rodrigo Santoro as Xerxes) and 300 is not without its treats.
Delicacies of dismemberment aside, 300 is notable for its outrageous sexual confusion. Here stands the Spartan king Leonidas (Gerard Butler) and his 299 buddies in nothing but leather man-panties and oiled torsos, clutching a variety of phalluses they seek to thrust in the bodies of their foes by trapping them in a small, rectum-like mountain passage called the "gates of hell(o!)" Yonder rises the Persian menace, led by the slinky, mascara'd Xerxes. When he's not flaring his nostrils at Leonidas and demanding he kneel down before his, uh, majesty, this flamboyantly pierced crypto-transsexual lounges on chinchilla throw pillows amidst a rump-shaking orgy of disfigured lesbians.
On first glance, the terms couldn't be clearer: macho white guys vs. effeminate Orientals. Yet aside from the fact that Spartans come across as pinched, pinheaded gym bunnies, it's their flesh the movie worships. Not since Beau Travail has a phalanx of meatheads received such insistent ogling. As for the threat to peace, freedom, and democracy, that filthy Persian orgy looks way more fun than sitting around watching Spartans mope while their angry children slap each other around. At once homophobic and homoerotic, 300 is finally, and hilariously, just hysterical.
Filthy Persian orgies? Butt plug action? Yesssss!
1 comment:
Update: I have seen 300 and it felt empty. The dialogue is leaden, the characters are paper thin, and the violence started to feel like wallpaper in its consistently high gore factor.
Many times, I could hardly tell the Spartans apart because I couldn't take my eyes off their heaving chests and crazy abs. And one chest is pretty indistinguishable from another.
One of the weakest points of the movie (Spoiler Alert): the Spartans easily came across as the highschool jocks when Ephialtes comes begging for the chance to fight by their side. The hunchback asks to be part of the phalanx, having been trained by his compassionate Spartan father his whole life. Yet, his deformity prevents him from raising his shield so King Leonides rejects him with a, "Sorry, buddy. You just can't join our clique. Only buff guys like us deserve the right to die gloriously on the battlefield. Hell, maybe even without a shield."
In contemporary movie terms, Ephialtes would have been given the chance to prove his worth because the popular opinion tends to be against eugenics. Just look at the hobbits in Lord of the Rings or whiny little Luke in Star Wars. It is strange that a North American box office hit in 2007 touts the Aryan ideal while casting aside the deformed, coloured people and homosexuals. Thanks alot, Frank Miller!
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