Saturday, March 31, 2007
300
Written by Frank Miller, directed, evidently, by Leni Riefenstahl. Good God, this thing is horrendous on soooo many levels. Without exagerration, I can say that it is about as close to Nazi (not just fascist) propaganda as you will ever see from a major motion picture studio. From King Xerxes as an inexplicably 10 1/2 foot tall, body-pierced, mincing black queen, to the unsubtle message that dark-skinned people, Democrats and the "genetically impure" all deserve to die, the message is pounded home with the subtlety of a battle-axe. And history? Oh Lord, forget history. Here, the Persian Army is composed of armored rhinoceroses, elephants, cave trolls and ninja (wearing identical silver kabuki masks) and sixty-five million orcs. Leonidas, who in reality was King of a Sparta that enslaved 8 out of 10 of his subjects, fights for "freedom" and "reason" against the forces of multi-culturalism, gay rights, sniveling peace-niks (in the form of Theron as John Kerry) and cowardly untrustworthy allies. Don't get me wrong; Thermopylae was an important battle. And we're lucky the Greeks ultimately won, since otherwise democracy would have died in its infancy. But this? This is nothing but Birth of a Nation for neo-cons. Just...horrible. Really, really horrible.
