by Rebecca Mikulin

Created on: April 08, 2009

The Spartans comprised a warrior state that took fighting to the level of an art form. The men were soldiers...that was their profession, and they spent every day training and subjecting their bodies to the most rigorous conditioning. Babies were closely inspected at birth for any sign of defect, if any were found they were left to die (or "discarded").

This film begins with a simple explanation of the life of a Spartan boy and progresses into the preparation for the battle of Thermopylae. The Spartan King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) has been forbidden by his priests to go to war with Persia. The resourceful king instead requests 300 of his finest men to walk with him to a narrow corridor by the sea where the opposing vast army could only send a small number against him at a time.

This all happens within twenty minutes of the beginning of the film. The rest is comprised of the historical three days Leonidas and his men spent battling the Persian ranks, with a small detour to follow the underhanded schemes of the hunchback Ephialtes (Andrew Tiernan), a name which should be familiar to anyone who has researched the history of this battle, though the character himself may not be as pictured.

I really wasn't sure what to expect when I popped this disk into the DVD player. I'll be the first to tell you that I absolutely love history and am the only 22-year-old I know who spends her days poring over dense non-fiction and obscure classics, so a film on one of my first historical loves, Sparta, definitely piqued my interest. Historical accuracy is something I've learned not to hope for from a movie (though it is nice when it actually makes an appearance), but I like these films for their ability to remind me that the people I read about were real flesh and blood once upon a time.

This film didn't worry too much about historical accuracy, as I'd expected, it's based mostly on Frank Miller's comics of the late 90s and there are plenty of parts that have been freely embellished to create a more film-friendly epic. The weapons have been changed and some of the cultural background was incorrect or embellished, among other things. To the film maker's credit, there is quite a bit added in that is
historically correct and these were the parts I especially enjoyed...not least of all because I got to teach my then-significant other a little bit of history whether he likes it or not.

The entire film was shot on bluescreen with all of the background added in later, utilizing the ever-useful

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>