Zack Snyder
300

Three Hundred. And not a single one will be left alive...

Holy Christ, what a "massive" movie!!
This brand new "300" by Zack Snyder, based on the cult comic by Frank Miller is a true heavyweight of depth and "machismo" that oozes strength, intensity, and sweat in every single frame, obsessively crafted by a photographic direction that is nothing short of maniacal and truly unique.
The film recounts the epic and dramatized (but still real, as history books tell us) story of King Leonidas, the Spartan king who, ensconced in the narrow pass of Thermopylae, actively resisted the horde of Persians ready to invade Athens and the whole of Greece at a ratio of 100,000:1!!

A story set in the distant 480 B.C. that is already tragic and epic at the same time and that revives for once, a value almost forgotten today: that of those who die to defend an ideal of Freedom.
A very "right-wing" film if I may use the term (but I don't want to make a speech about petty politics now or fall into clichés), for the events narrated, for the very absolutist way of seeing cause and effect of things and for the lack of sensitivity and the shallow depth of love that permeates this band of warriors/kamikazes ready to sacrifice themselves for this just cause but who offer little in terms of depth and humanity (apart from the relationship between a father and son united by the same warrior fate and the cold exchanges of affection/love between Leonidas and his frigid wife tough as a proto-feminist Amazon).

We are faced with a film in which these 300 super-macho give a hard time to the ridiculous Conan Schwarzenegger mythical saga that was, who fight relentlessly (this seems the second reading of the film) every form of supremacy and diversity: there are Asian enemies, fear of the East, hyper-muscular gays (Xerxes), and other not well-defined deviations that become THE enemy and nothing more, to be annihilated without ifs and buts (even the ambassadors, who are known not to bear repercussions, are eliminated at the beginning of the film).

"We are not human: we are Spartans!" and on this maxim (series: whocares?!) everything and the opposite of everything is justified that fits well but, in the long run, seems more like an alibi to justify every massacre. And indeed, by coincidence, the film has been boycotted and the subject of criticism from multiple quarters, for the more or less veiled allusions to the current situation between Iran, Iraq, and the war-mongering America of Bush & Co.
A film certainly magnificent for the aesthetic quality of its images reminiscent of the fantasy illustrations of the late Franzetta. A film in many ways "ahead" with some reservations for the battle scenes, so loaded and exaggerated that it seems like witnessing a Gameboy in automatic mode.
Perhaps a bit childish in many parts but some dialogues are crisp and direct, always on a razor's edge, are spine-tingling and from the Manual of True Brutal. ☺☺☺