Tonight We Dine in Hell!!

Why am I not surprised? I mean, it was probably bound to happen: the loincloth worn by Gerard Butler in 300 is now up for grabs on eBay. If you don’t believe me, check it out.

When you stop to think about it, this makes perfectly good sense. Ever since 300 launched its brilliant marketing campaign several months ago, we have been bombarded with a PECtacular promise of man meat. Butler, as King Leonidas, has been featured prominently, perhaps giving new meaning to “coming attraction.” The movie does not disappoint. It celebrates heroism and sacrifice. But no more than that, it also honors beefcake and brawn. For all its well-intentioned prattle about valor and machismo, it is also the gayest movie since Auntie Mame. Pumped up and edging its audience towards an orgiastic bloodbath, 300 pulls on everything from Steve Reeves movies to Tom of Finland cartoons with such confidence and authority that it is impossible not to surrender to this mind-numbing, jaw-dropping extravaganza.

In his very funny review for the New York Times, critic A.O. Scott wrote, “300 is about as violent as Apocalypto and twice as stupid.”

To a certain extent, Scott is right. The movie may very well be a simple-minded sword and sandal saga, gleefully choking on its own guts and gore. But as far as Cro-Magnon entertainments are concerned, this one is hard to beat. Director Zack Snyder, adapting Frank Miller’s graphic novel, has brought forth something very new and rather strange: it’s part amusement park and part video game disguised as a movie. And it works. Brilliantly.

It covers familiar territory, already drawn out on the screen in The 300 Spartans (1962): Sparta’s King Leonidas (Butler) leads his army of a mere 300 soldiers against Persia’s King Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro, late of TV’s Lost) and his bazillion troops at the Battle of Thermopylae. But Snyder’s movie is much less a history lesson than a brutal, nihilistic, musclebound glorification of cinema’s future shock, where things like acting and design are replaced by blue screens and the marvels of technology. Sin City (also based on a Miller work) and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow have already hinted at the possibilities of computer-generated movies. 300 claims that movies like these are here to stay. Design-wise, it’s a winner. It’s pretty to look at it, in a blood-drenched kind of fashion, with excellent editing and a lovely score. Be on the lookout for a sequence involving the sinking of Persian ships. Wow.

Much has been written this week about the film's boffo box-office ($70 million in less thn than a week) and how fansites and comic book enthusiasts have assured its popularity. That’s fine. But what may be a tad worrisome is that the things that many of us hold dear, like craft for starters, is replaced here by spellbinding gadgetry. The story doesn’t simply unfold. It is catapulted off the screen right into our laps and, in case we are newcomers to nuance, there’s a narrator on hand to make sure we understand exactly what we are supposed to know. The acting, if you can call it that, is even less subtle. The entire cast preens and struts, flexes and poses. For all his swaggering and breast beating, Butler doesn’t act as much as be barks and bellows. But boy, does he pack that loin cloth. (He also sounds just like Sean Connery every time he brays “Shhhhpartaaaah!”)

The rest of the cast members are about as wooden as the Bill Baird marionettes performing “The Lonely Goatherd.” Those cast as the Persians are especially one-dimensional but it’s hard to poo-poo the brave souls writhing around in Xerxes’ orgy, especially when they are credited with characters such as Transsexual Asian #1, Kissing Concubine #2 and Transsexual Arabian #3. Oh, that Xerxes. He was an equal-opportunity libertine, that’s for sure.

And yes, when it is all over and accounted for, it really comes down to the loincloth. Bidding is currently underway. May the best man win.