Netflix review #25: The 300 Spartans

Before there was Frank Miller and Zack Snyder's ridiculously over the top, highly stylized, ultra-violent movie 300, which I really liked, and before Steven Pressfield's excellent historical novel The Gates of Fire, also highly recommended, a movie released at the height of the historical epic was released in 1962 detailing the famous last stand of Spartan king Leonidas and his 300 warriors at the pass at Thermopylae, appropriately called The 300 Spartans.

Stories of massacres and last stands, Thermopylae, the Alamo, the Little Big Horn, translate well to movies. There's something noble about men believing so strongly in what they do that they are willing to give up their lives in a hopeless battle, knowing the end before it even starts. Nowhere is that more evident than with the story of the Spartans, a culture of warriors trained from the moment they could pick up a sword so they could one day gloriously die in battle fighting for their land and people.

For those that don't know the history, here's the basic rundown of the battle of Thermopylae, which the movie sticks pretty close to in terms of storytelling. It's 480 B.C. and Persian king Xerxes (David Farrar) is sweeping across the free world with his enormous army totaling in the millions. He's nearing Greece and all her city states, looking at an easy victory because the states remain divided and refuse to unify to fend off their destruction. Pride, huh? The only way the city states will organize is if the Spartans will lead them to battle.

Promising that the Spartans will be at the front of the Greek armies, Spartan king Leonidas (Richard Egan) begins to prepare the battle plan with Athenian leader Themistocles (Ralph Richardson). Leonidas will lead the Spartan army to the pass at Thermopylae which the Persians will have to come through. With a smaller force the Spartans will hope to negate the Persian numbers because the pass is too small to let large numbers of men in. At the same time, Themistocles will lead the Greek navy against the Persian fleet. But problems arise immediately, none of the Greeks can send their armies to help, and even the Spartans refuse to send their whole force.

Going against policy that requires warriors to wait till the end of a festival to fight, Leonidas leads his personal bodyguards, a unit of 300 Spartans, to the pass at Thermopylae to hold off the millions of the Persian army. It's a suicide mission from the start as Leonidas and the 300 must buy time for the rest of Greece to organize and prepare. Filmed in Greece, 'Spartans' feels pretty authentic even if the Thermopylae pass is really just a Greek hillside that slopes down into water. Hey, it looks nice though.

The problem with massacre/last stand movies is getting to that point. Everyone knows it's coming, but the movie can't cut right to it, otherwise we'd be watching 15 minute movies. The 300 Spartans takes too long getting to the battle, too long even to when the Spartans leave for the pass. The first hour is extremely heavy on dialogue, and not in an interesting way. Persians are coming, Greek representatives waver on what to do, the Spartans sacrifice themselves. Seems basic enough to me, but it moves along at a snail's pace getting there.

Part of the struggles can be chalked up to the script which is just kind of there. It's not bad, but it never really comes to life. Maybe because Gerard Butler in 300 was so theatrical and I had that picture in my head, but these Spartans never come to life. Egan is all right as Leonidas but it's not a memorable performance. The two lines that everyone knows, 'the Persians have so many archers their arrows will blot out the sun....Then we'll fight in the shade' and 'Lay down your weapons...Come and take them!' are delivered without any flair or emotion. None of the supporting cast other than Richardson really distinguishes themselves, with Diane Baker and Barry Coe as a young Spartan couple in love, got to have a love story, Donald Houston as Xerxes' top general, Anna Synodinou as Leonidas' wife Gorgo, and John Crawford and Robert Brown as two Spartans.

What does work in the movie is the production values, the spectacle of the story. Battle scenes are well done, especially the fight with Xerxes' Immortals, with hundreds of extras playing both the Spartans and the Persian army. The last stand is handled nicely, historically accurate too, but it doesn't have the emotional punch of the ending to 300. The costuming, the sets, all those things work, but other than that, the movie never comes to life.

The DVD at under $10 at Amazon is a safe buy with a cleaned-up widescreen presentation, a trailer in English and Spanish, and trailers for Cleopatra, The Robe, and Demetrius and the Gladiators. The DVD is cheap so you won't be spending a ton to buy it, but I'd recommend renting it first or at least trying to see it before buying. For me, I'll stick with the more recent and much more enjoyable 300.

The 300 Spartans (1962): **/****