Review: 300
Tonight we dine in hell. And love every minute of it.
Last night we attended a screening of Warner Bros.’ 300 at the MCL JP Cinema in Causeway Bay - and in one word our review is: BREATHTAKING.
To preface this: its definitely a guy movie (ladies don’t be fooled by the muscular men) lots of shouting, fighting and killing - but OH done so masterfully and graceful and with enough “WOW” moments I could call this The Matrix of gladiator movies.
If you miss seeing it in the theaters starting March 15, you will regret it.
Where to begin? Lets start with the fact that director Zack Snyder and main actor Gerard Butler have cemented their futures in Hollywood. Snyder has graduated from his Dawn of the Dead to make a visually stunning masterpiece that will make every guy stand up and cheer while Butler shows that he is more than a leading man and makes Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine look like Michael Jackson.
The story is simple and straightforward, a king takes 300 of his men to fight 250,000 soldiers coming to take over the king’s land - but its the visual style that makes this movie something special - like The Matrix. Filmed like Frank Miller’s other comic-to-movie adventure Sin City, it was all shot with bluescreens and all the backgrounds were put in later. But because the moviemakers can so carefully control color they can also enhance the actors and even the emotion.
The costumes were amazing, the blood effects were amazing - if you enjoyed Sin City - 300 does it 10 times better (maybe because the source material is better) if you like gladiator movies or even Lord of the Rings this movie is for you.
This movie is going to be HUGE! It raises the bar again for comic-book movies and gives Frank Miller another win and almost guarentees his two other graphics novels Hard Boiled and Give Me Liberty life as movies. And for Mr. Snyder who is already in pre-production of the greatest superhero graphic novel: The Watchmen; his star can only rise as the mighty Spartans raise their spears as they head into battle.
If we were to use stars, 300 gets the full set.
[...] The good folks over at Butterball werenot only kind enough to grant KFR use of their sweet, sweet Hong Kong poster for 300 in exchange for sending everyone over to read their review of the flick, but they’re also in the process of creating a number of killer wallpapers from the 300 press kit images. I’ve seen one of them already, and all you Frank Miller fans are gonna be slapping ‘em all over your computer monitors shortly. [...]