THE FILM

Leading this relentless attack of a stout-hearted few defending the Greek city-state against invading hoards of repression is King Leonidas, a walking legend of a warrior made sternly human and heroic by actor Gerard Butler in a battering-ram performance.  Leonidas’ Spartan code has honed him into a physically and strategically lethal weapon, yet the script and Butler allow viewers to recognize glimpses of his humanity which lurk under the muscle-armored persona on the battlefield.  The violence he unleashes is waged to defeat the enslavement and extinction of his people, as the infamous 480 B.C. Battle of Thermopylae pits his vastly outnumbered forces against the armed multitudes from Persia, under the rule of the vain, bejeweled demi-god Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro).   Despite impossible odds against him, Leonidas fights not only for the freedom of his own Spartan culture, but for the future of Western Civilization to follow.   His cause is as political as it is personal, and the honor which he defends with his life extends generations beyond his own glory in the name of freedom for all humanity.

Lena Headey gives an equally taciturn but sympathetic performance as his Queen, Gorgo, and David Wenham as Dilios, Leonidas’ stalwart brother-in-arms, carries the narrative spirit of the film with poetic (if sometimes stilted) conviction.  Dominic West invests a slithering subtlety to his role as Theron, Gorgo’s undermining foe in the Spartan council chambers as she attempts to rally political support behind her husband’s defensive campaign.  

If the film has one crucial weak link, it resides in Santoro’s Xerxes, who offers the film more gilded posing than mortal peril (aside from his slave army) in a role full of sound and fury but signifying no personal menace beyond his superhuman ego which awaits its inevitable deflation.  Otherwise, regardless of the visually heightened action and stolid military manners, lead and supporting performances stand Spartan strong across the board, which make the improbably heroic special effects style of warfare not only tolerable but truthful to the spirit of this elevated elegy to human valor.

PREPARE FOR GLORY

Warner Brothers Home Entertainment’s presentation of 300 on HD-DVD captures the stunning visual impact of the film boldly and beautifully in a 1080p transfer, preserving Larry Fong’s spectacular cinematography in a 2.4:1 widescreen aspect ratio.   Yes, the high-def resolution captures and delivers the film’s intentionally grainy look, if not magnifying it a tad, but such visual texture simulates to the eye all the grimy, gut-wrenching visceral impact of the brutishly balletic violence portrayed.  Without this sandpaper grit in the images, the film would have devolved into a lushly painted panorama of soldiers clashing on a pretty but pointless digital canvas.  Like the slow-motion spurts of blood splashing across the screen with every spear thrust, embrace the high-def grain as the visual seasoning on a bloody-rare beefsteak of sword-and-shield action.

The highlight of the HD-DVD presentation is the exclusive picture-in-picture offering which compares the raw stage footage shot against blue and green screens with the final CG composited film — a high-value bonus feature not available on the Blu-Ray release of 300, and its embedded raw footage window is made clearly viewable in detail thanks to the marvelous 1080p encoding. Yet this extra would fail to achieve its potential without Zack Snyder’s audio commentary track narrating the unprocessed stage footage shot-by-shot: to the delight of tech-loving geeks and the education of casual viewers impressed by the film, his recollections pay due credit to the artistic and technical efforts which turned a blank blue screen into the ancient columns and calamitous battlefields of Sparta.  It is just such advancements which fulfill the expectations and potential of the high-definition format, and high praise to the filmmakers and Warner Home Entertainment for maximizing 300’s impact on this release.

Yet the HD benefits do not end with such visual feasts, as the Dolby True HD 5.1 audio track (at awe-inspiring 48kHz/16-bit/1.7 Mbps) sets a defining benchmark in high-definition sound in home theater playback.  Given the bombastic scale of the film, its True HD surround field artfully blends the subtlest of sound effects, from a cloud of arrows blotting the sky to the tiny grinding of gravel beneath the Spartans’ sandals, to the booming shouts of soldiers and the thunderous approach of a charging rhinoceros.  Clear and distinct effects tracks blend seamlessly with well-defined dialogue channels, spanning the range of tonality and surround processing in utter high-definition audio glory. 

Tyler Bates’ belligerent, moody, subtle and unpredictable score also benefits from True HD  presentation, supporting the film with disciplined power when needed and stepping back to let key visual sequences have their glory.  A separate 5.1 Dolby Digital Plus track is also available if your sound system can’t hack True HD, as well as standard English, French and Spanish 5.1 tracks.  Matching 300’s visual impact was no easy feat for its audio counterpart, but the latter certainly lives up to the challenge in a masterful effort.

THIS IS SPARTA

The high-definition feast is only beginning in this HD-DVD release, with extensive bonus features, some not found on the standard DVD or Blu-Ray discs.  An umbrella making-of section Behind the Story offers about an hour of material, apportioned in six sub-sections:

• The Making-of Featurette offers six minutes of the more typical, non-distinctive promotional fare found on nearly every studio’s disc release, but serves as a basic jumping-off point for behind-the-scenes documentation of 300’s production with initial visits with director Snyder, author Miller and the cast.  Don’t be put off by this standard promo item as the bonus features soon build to more in-depth material.
• Making 300 in Images demonstrates a bit more imagination, covering much of the same production ground but presented in a moody, four-minute still image slideshow for an artistic flair more akin to the stylization of the film itself.  Probably not something fans will view repeatedly, but worth the effort and a viewing.
• The Frank Miller Tapes give viewers new to the 300 phenomenon a much-needed (and appreciated) foundation of understanding about Miller’s benchmark graphic novel.  The author joins ranks with DC Comics head Paul Levitz and more of his comic comrades deliver fifteen minutes of entertaining insights into when, how and why Miller’s novel attained cult hero worship, and why Snyder’s dead-on interpretation of the work successfully captured the bloody, grainy grit of this illustrated Spartan epic.
• 300 Spartans – Fact or Fiction is a highly informative, 25-minute gem comparing the historic accuracies and dramatic license in the film with the realities of the Thermopylae battle and Spartan culture.  Miller and Snyder are joined by several members of the cast and crew including Gerard Butler, along with a small brace of historians, to align ancient fact with the novel and film to better celebrate the legend and legacy of the defiant Spartans which live on memorialized still today.
• Who Were the Spartans? delves into the actors’ preparations and study of their historic characters and how the cast prepared to reproduce ancient persons who actually lived and died amid Spartan manners and mayhem twenty-five centuries ago.
• Prepare for Battle: The Test Footage is Snyder’s six-minute recap of his journey to bringing 300 into theaters, a segment which appeared as a hidden Easter Egg on the standard DVD release.  The highlight is the pitch reel Snyder shot to convince Warner Brothers that Miller’s graphic novel could translate visually and entertainingly into the cinematic medium.  The result is a 360-degree spin around a Spartan warrior dispatching early-draft Persian baddies, demonstrating the use of CG environments and effects paired with the visual stylization of color-shifted cinematography.  The final film advanced far beyond this early attempt, but the test shoot embodies everything which 300 ultimately became — viewing it leaves little wonder why Warners backed the project.
• Deleted Scenes not in the feature film include commentary by Zack Snyder, who explains why he cut the Persian Giant scene (a fan-pleasing but narrative excess even he couldn’t justify) along with other omitted moments like extended time with Ephialtes which didn’t survive the final edit of his film.
• Webisodes offer a dozen standard-definition featurettes, each about five minutes in length, shot during the film’s production, focusing on specific aspects including design, wardrobe, stunts, and fantastic characters.  Vignettes with actors Gerard Butler, Lena Headey and Rodrigo Santoro are also offered aside additional short studies of Spartan culture and novel adaptation. While these are the only low-definition bonus extras on the disc, this still remains a handy collection for quick reference.
• Pick Your Favorite Scenes is another HD-exclusive interactive bonus offering, a web-enabled feature allowing viewers to bookmark desired clips during the film and upload them in your own custom edit to a studio-hosted server for online sharing with other fans.  It application here may be a bit limited in effect — how dynamic your results are depend on your aesthetic/editing taste — but consider it an entry-level exploitation of the HD technology which will reap larger, more inspiring benefits in the future.
• Vengeance and Valor is an HD-only game in which you lead your own squad of Spartan warriors against the marauding multitudes of Xerxes’ legions on the ancient battlefield.  Test your knowledge of Spartan strategy and war tactics as seen in the film amid a virtual scrimmage of icons to determine if you are worthy of eternal glory.  I suspect this feature is as fun as you make it, with vid-platform veterans likely making the most of the game’s playability.
• Web Merchandise also breaks technological ground in a rather minor victory, allowing users to access (and purchase) 300-themed mobile downloads of wallpapers and ringtones directly via their HD disc and an internet connected  HD-DVD player.  Even though web-enabled merchandising through DVDs is far past a cutting edge concept, no doubt studios will push this technology extension to generate sidebar revenue off the sale and use of high-def disc machines to fund and encourage the melding of home entertainment and studio-produced online content into one, eventually seamless stream of information and technology updates in our wired world.

TO VICTORY

Long has artist-author Frank Miller bemoaned Hollywood’s butchered attempts to capitalize on his comic-based legend, and long has he turned down their offers to hurl his efforts onto the screen out of a desire to preserve his works’ integrity if not his own sanity.  A few brave visionaries — two to be exact — have stood up against studio demands to process Miller’s visions into more palatable pab for the masses.  The first being Robert Rodriguez who co-directed with Miller a stark, faithful homage to SIN CITY in 2005 which used the same green screen sets and CG-environment effects to enact its bold black-and-white world.