In the year 480 B.C., King Xerxes, the ruler of the mighty
Persian Empire, has launched an invasion of Greece--which is considered to be
nothing more than a group of squabbling city-states which will be easy to push
over. Xerxes sees this new campaign as being more than a new road to conquest
and expansion of his empire, but also to avenge his father, who was defeated by
Athens at Marathon ten years prior. Yet Xerxes doesn’t know that Athens has
constructed a new ‘wooden wall’ for itself, a fleet of brand new warships that
is ready to sail into battle. And to combat Xerxes army of several thousand
strong, the Spartans have been called to arms by their king, Leonidas
(Richard Egan).
However, the Spartan ruling council has overruled Leonidas, forbidding him not
to lead the army into battle until after the religious holiday. But the Persians
are coming now, and Leonidas, realizing the urgency of the situation, gathers
his personal body guards--a force of 300--and leads them into battle. Since
these troops are Leonidas’ own men, they are not bound by orders from anyone but
himself. And so, the small group of Spartans, accompanied by allied troops,
march North to greet the Persians at a narrow mountain pass called Thermopylae.
The rest is literally history.
The 300 Spartans moves at a very stately pace, presumably to take the time to
get to know the characters. Yet the pacing is so slow that we never really feel
the ominous threat of a massive enemy army bearing down on their very society.
It feels like it takes forever to finally get to the field of battle, thanks to
a lame subplot involving Phylon and Ellas, a pair of love birds who are trying
to make it in a harsh Spartan world. Their story is so corny it feels like one
is watching one of these lame beach blanket movies from the 1960s. I kept
expecting Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon to show up at any minute.
When the battle finally commences, it’s a fittingly epic confrontation as only
Hollywood in its glory days could produce--but the manner in which the combat
scenes are directed have an oddly distant quality to them, as if the director
didn’t want to get too invested in the blow by blow action. I realize that The
300 Spartans was very much "old school style" filmmaking, which lacked the
brutal and gory combat scenes of Frank Miller’s 300, but the entire film itself
is so bland and workman-like, that it doesn’t do a very good job of drawing you
into the story. The 300 Spartans is still watchable, which makes it an
interesting footnote for historical film buffs. --SF
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