Friday, March 16, 2007

Last Stand

"The World will know that free men stood against a tyrant, the few against the many, and before this war was over, even the God-King can bleed." -- Leonidas 300 is a good movie. It's very American, but it actually got something to say. War movies are cool. Killing and blood and adrenaline rush are certainly guys' things, but those aside, War brings into question the relationship between Citizen and the State. When Leonidas, the Spartan King who led 300 of his finest soldiers in the Battle of Thermopylae, was forbidden to bring his Spartan Army against the Persians, his questions and actions brings out a ethical question: What do you do in face of the injustice of your own country? Do you confront? Or do you obey? Funny enough, Socrates, one of the Athenians that Leonidas described as "Philosophers and Boy-lovers", asked the same question before he was prosecuted by his fellow Athenians and died. And then there is the fighting shots choreographed by computer graphics, so visually entertaining they even decided to sync it with the heavy-metal music in the background. Honestly, it looked more like video-game in Matrix style. And at one point, I got my eyes tired. Not like they were dry or what, but I thought my vision was so bombarded with visual excitements that I was like "woo can I pause this or what?". Maybe it was because I watched it in the biggest cinema in Hong Kong and the screen was too big. But as I was in the movie, it was entertaining I would keep asking for more of the fighting. As you could see from the poster the movie is full of gimmicks. Not only men in Speedo everywhere (for that I thought the movie took care of women and certain men audience), but Leonidas eating an apple after having killed hundreds or thousands of Persians like he was camping was pretty wicked. The best though, goes to the Persian King Xerxes. The Brazilian dude who played this role managed to look like Prince (the singer).(And the only thing I could think of was Chappelle's Prince sketch: "Ball, blouses" and "Would you like some pancakes?") I'm serious! I can't say 300 was an epic, but it was certainly better than Sin City.