focoproject.com

• Director: Zack Snyder
• Genre: Action/Drama/History/War
• Year: 2006

I can not say I am disappointed with this film, because it is exactly what I had braced myself for. Only by watching the trailers, I knew this would be a stunning visual feast with questionable acting. However, keeping up closely with reviews coming out, I had actually started to believe the movie was going to be better than predicted. People on the radio were raving, people that had seen it already had only good things to say and I felt it was a done deal until I saw Slant Magazine’s review on it. Most reviews I can overlook, but there are a few websites out there who hold a lot of credibility in their reviews and when I saw Slant gave it a 1.5 out of 4, I knew that my initial thought was correct.

In the end, it was a very fun and entertaining movie to watch, but I can not honestly call it a good movie. For starters, for a movie that spent this kind of money on the visual effects, they certainly dropped the ball on some simple things. The decapitation scene, for example (I will not say who is getting decapitated to not ruin the movie), or most of the decapitations actually, were poorly done, and there is one part where the body is falling (in slow motion of course) and you see the graphic of the severed neck move on the body! That is something that the most amateur person should have caught. There are also shots where you can see the dark make up used to delineate the muscles clearly as well…and while that may not be too much of a problem, it certainly is distracting.

The characters, awesomely designed and all, still can not manage to feel real and there lingers a constant reminder that these people have been ripped from the pages of a comic book (unlike Sin City where, you get the same effect but they actually pull it off). Dialogue…is hardly dialogue, unfortunately, mostly it is yelling and usually every sentence has the words ‘Sparta’ or ‘Spartans’ about five times in each, so that by the time the movie is done, the word Sparta has lost its meaning entirely. Not only that, but it also feels like they tried a bit too hard to get the clever punch lines and witty combacks in, to the point where they end up being humorous jokes rather than truly cool, quotable lines.

However, it must be said that this movie is not entirely without merit. Visually, for the most part, it is a stunning movie and they have taken the use of blue screen to another level the way they did with Sin City. The color palatte, a golden hue that seems to linger over the majority of the scenes, brings a rich mood that seems to add to the epic feel that the movie is trying to reach. It is also incredibly loyal to Frank Miller’s original work, down to character design, which I must say was amazing. Some of the battle scenes are great and all throughout you there is a sense of tension that carries through the film in a way that will keep the audience on edge, aided also by a soundtrack that was very well mixed and utilized classical and rock elements in a surprisingly good blend.

Unfortunately, there is too many dropped balls to elevate this movie to what it should have been. Some of the most intruiging characters that are hinted to in the trailer, get absolutely no air time. In fact, what you see in the trailer actually ends up being pretty much all the footage on them, which is terribly disappointing.

The sets were mixed, sometimes they looked amazingly well done, other times you very poorly done and I suppose this is the risk that you end up taking when you shoot a movie entirely on blue screen, that regardless of how hard you try, you will never be able to recreate a convincing look. Given that problem, I would have perhaps pushed the stylization a lot more, to make it look purposely unreal, or worked harder to make it credible…but when you leave it somewhere in the middle…it simply looks like a mistake.

My final decision? It is a mediocre film, in comparison to some of the great films I have watched and reviewed here, but not entirely one to overlook. What they have done is still a feast for the eyes, even if slow motion tends to ruin a lot of it, even if the backgrounds don’t always look seamless, even when the lighting is incorrectly done…it is still a fun and entertaining show to watch, if you just want a pump up sort of film with lots of action sequences and very cool characters. Besides, the only way to get the most of this movie will be up on the big screen.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5
Notes: Violence, nudity, sexuality and much yelling about Sparta.
Quote: Persian Emissary: This is madness!
Spartan King Leonidas: Madness? This is Sparta!