"The 300 Spartans" (1962) (The 300 Spartans (DVD))

Member Name: jbsabbath

Product:	The 300 Spartans (DVD)
Date:	21/03/09 (94 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Interesting period of history

Disadvantages: Lacklustre battle scenes, wooden acting, out-of-place accents

"Our arrows will blot out the sun!"

"Then we will fight in the shade."

It's 450BC and the tyrant Xerxes (David Farrar), king of the mighty Persian Empire, has decided to invade Greece with his vast armies, conquer all of the known world and bring it all under his rule.

The Greeks are willing to put up a fight but they are lost in their bureaucracy and bickering as they are not yet a cohesive country, more a group of Greek states, each with their own laws, customs and leaders.

So it is left up to the Spartans, the fiercest of all Greek warriors, to head a charge led by King Leonidas (Richard Egan) who decides to meet the Persians at Thermopylae, a narrow stretch the invaders must pass through that can be easily defended.

However, a religious holiday will postpone the release of the Spartan army, but Leonidas must act quickly otherwise they will not make the pass in time.

Going against orders, he takes 300 of his best soldiers and marches them to Thermopylae to take on the tens of thousands of Persians, all in the aid of buying his countrymen back home enough time to ready the troops for war.

Is it a suicide mission, or can the well-trained army hold back Xerxes' mighty legions?

To be honest, I'm not a fan of many of these big-production Ancient-epic war movies from the 50's/60's, with their masses of togas, huge quantities of extras, boring characters and misplaced accents.

"The 300 Spartans" is really no different, refusing to put much into its script or acting, and relying solely on big battle sequences with hundreds and hundreds of extras.

While these scenes may appear impressive, they are not really that clever in their execution, nor are they directed well, so more often than not it's just one bunch of guys running towards another bunch and pushing each other's shields for a couple of minutes.

As is the norm with films like this, there's some really lacklustre fighting going on from the numerous extras, standing about with a blunt pike doing bugger all as the enemy takes a swing at them, and falling down dead in the most overly theatrical ways.

With the similar theme of a last stand against insurmountable odds, one might compare this to the Battle of Rourke's Drift as in the excellent "Zulu" that came two years later.

"Zulu" surpasses this movie in every way, in its depiction of the enemy, in its frantic and bloody war scenes, and in its fantastic characters and actors.

The lead star in "The 300 Spartans" is Richard Egan as King Leonidas, whose heavy American accent is at odds with many of the other actors and seems way out of place.

While he may well look the part, he certainly wouldn't have instilled much confidence in me if I was in his army, as he comes across more of an Atticus Finch-type family man rather than a bone-shattering hero of Greece.

On the opposite side of the fence we have David Farrar in his last acting role as the evil tyrant Xerxes.

While the character comes across suitably nasty and despicable, he never appears to be that intelligent at all and certainly not a worthy adversary or villain, especially when he ignores his advisors and is seduced so easily by Queen Artemisa (Anne Wakefield) into following her ideas.

The film would instead have benefited from perhaps a more faceless enemy, much like that of "Zulu", where we are faced by the hordes of their armies and don't really get to see those behind them or understand their motivation.

Another important player is Ralph Richardson as Themistocles, a representative from Athens who lends his wisdom to the proceedings.

He is perhaps the most well known out of the cast here and he certainly lends an authority to the film, but he doesn't ever really get anything interesting to do and more or less stands on the sidelines for much of the movie.

Compared with similar epics of the time, "The 300 Spartans" doesn't really make any leaps or bounds and is more a history lesson than anything else, because as a film it didn't really come across as that entertaining at all.

Genre-wise, compare it to nowadays flicks like "Gladiator", "Troy" and "Alexander", and the main difference, other than the amount of CGI, is that "The 300 Spartans" lacks good characters, a good score and any emotion.

But the main comparison here is obviously going to be with Zack Snyder's "300" based on Frank Miller's graphic novel, which in turn was based on this movie and the actual historic event.

Of course, "300" is heavily stylised with its series of slow-motion action scenes, masses of CGI and buckets of blood, adding in a fantastical element for the hell of it as well.

"300" is easily the more entertaining of the two movies, even though the 1962 film tries to ground itself in reality, and ultimately the movie comes across as boring because of it.

Those who like these kinds of sandal-and-sword epics from the 60's will be at home here, but for the casual viewer this is one of those Sunday afternoon flicks put on to entertain the grandparents.

[The DVD can be purchased from play.com for £2.99 (at time of writing), including postage and packing]

Summary: Sandle-and-sword epic and nothing much else