As a kid, every­one of us might have come across comic books or the characters..May be the Kabeesh, Vet­taikara vembu, Sup­pandi from Poon­thalir, Irumbu kei mayavi [ Man­jal poo mar­mam, Maan­da­van meen­daan :) ], CID Lawrence, Johny Nero, Mod­esty Blaise, George Nolan, FBI Agent XIII, Thup­pariyum Tiger, James Bond, Inspec­tor Azaad, Man­dra­vathi Man­drake, Bat­man, Super­man, Spi­der­man, Iron man, Asterix, Tintin,  and so on [ or at least kanni theevu / Aandiyaar :) ]. Ani­ma­tion movies can be seen an exten­sion of our child­hood comic books. So what is a graphic novel ?

Comics comes mostly in series.. Like any other episode of a Super hero. Bat­man in Bangkok, Mon­ster in Man­hat­tan, Scot­land Sniper —  kind of sto­ries which is a sep­a­rate entity from the other series. The graphic novel is a com­plete novel told in pic­tures and divided into chap­ters. One such great graphic novel is 300 writ­ten by Frank Miller. Due to its vio­lence con­tent it is restricted to adults. So what is 300 ?

The title rep­re­sents 300 Spar­tans who fought for a cause against the Per­sians [ his­toric Bat­tle of Ther­mopy­lae  ]. How inter­est­ing it could be to see the graphic novel on screen? In fact, it’s more inter­est­ing to visu­alise and see the char­ac­ters, we read in comics, lively.

Plot

Once, the huge Per­sian army was con­quer­ing or mak­ing the other king­dom to sur­ren­der — whichever they come across on their way. They under­es­ti­mate the king­dom of Sparta in the same way and send them a mes­sen­ger to threaten the king. Leonidas is the Sparta king — very brave and pow­er­ful, born fight­ers. But Spar­tans [ Peo­ple of Sparta ] have only one theme in life. No sur­ren­der! They dare to fight against the will of their cham­ber of guides [ coun­cil ] to the king. The 300 mem­ber Sparta squad marches against the mas­sive Per­sian Empire and what hap­pens in the story is all about. 

Mean­while coun­cil plays a foul game with Leonidas’s wife and she also proves that she’s a great and brave Spar­tan woman.

View

If you are aller­gic to vio­lence and blood, bet­ter to stay away from 300. Come on..It’s a war hap­pen­ing in 480 BC and one can­not expect of tak­ing the lives with a sin­gle bul­let or some chem­i­cal gas. It has to be done by a spear or a sword. That’s why the title “300” itlsef is made up of blood. After a long time, I have seen a nerve-racking film with fight back­drop.. Heroic dia­logues, chal­lenges [ remem­ber the open­ing chal­lenge dia­logue in Cha­triyan ], new tech­niques in fight­ing, arrow rain, mas­sive army, use of shields .. fab­u­lous n nerve-racking  fights. The war begins when the Per­sian mes­sen­ger warns the King to speak words care­fully. What hap­pens next was the per­fect hero­ism [ Thambi.. gate-i moodraa :) Vet­taiyaadu vellayaadu  ].

The film is a visual feast and to my sur­prise they have almost done a shot-by-shot pic­tur­i­sa­tion of the film, com­pared to the novel. I have glanced the novel too. It’s rawer. It’s like the dif­fer­ence between Drokaal [ directed by Govind Nih­lani — orig­i­nal ‘Kurud­hip punal’ ] and a styl­ishly remade Tamil ver­sion. The col­ors, tone and light­ing are done fab­u­lously in this movie. The work done by Lary Fong was tremen­dous even though CG is involved. Some of the shots are shown in slow motion and they add more grip to the fight sequences. A pow­er­ful leader with 6 packs body in the front fol­lowed by another 299 * 6 packs :) The courage they have is tremen­dous and inspir­ing. They know they are very less in num­ber but they draw a great exam­ple for their fel­low countrymen.

Some of the sequences resem­ble the other good war films like “Glad­i­a­tor” [ bril­liant per­for­mance by Rus­sell Crowe — sep­a­rate story ] and Brave­heart [ mas­ter­piece of James Horner ] . Our Leonidas also expresses his role neatly and sub­tly. He looks very pow­er­ful and his beard adds value to his mus­cle built up.

Music per­fectly blends for the war film and asso­ci­ated with nerve grip­ping fights. Every sin­gle frame looks very rich and ultra grand.

I came to know about the Spar­tans in the film Spar­ta­cus [ from our Stan­ley Kubrick with Kirk Dou­glas as hero ]. Spar­tans are like Japan­ese Samu­rais, Rajputs [born fight­ers]. They are sup­posed to be the best trained fight­ers of their time. Inter­est­ingly, the weapons used are very less but they achieve more than what they were sup­posed to. Their war meth­ods are famous. Even there’s a video game with 300 Spar­tans as the main theme [ Sony PSP — March to glory ].

I wrote this for Mem­oirs of geisha — “In VLC player, there’s an option to con­vert any frame of the film to wall­pa­per. This film is worth all the frames :) “ The same is applic­a­ble for 300 too. The film pro­duc­tion went on like this.. 2 months of pre-production, 2 months of actual shoot­ing and then 1 year of post pro­duc­tion and visual effects. The out­put is fab­u­lous on screen.

Usu­ally, I regret that I could have seen a film in big screen. No .. Not for this visual feast. The film 300 is worth watch­ing only in I-MAX screen !!! Thanks to Crankx for refer­ring this film !

:)

Toto.

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