Interesting inclusion of “300″ in the litany of recent bad war films, Mr. Crittenden. Many of those who’ve negatively reviewed to the film are deeply-seated pacifists, responding to the film with an admirable Pavlovian predictability. Most people in the younger age bracket (say, late high school through college) who’ve seen the movie take it as an affirmation of those virtues that the Spartans were fighting for: defense of one’s home, family, and the Western way of life; against those who would destroy such things that make life worth living. It fits with the tale of the battle itself — Herodotus was never accused of writing in a “documentary” style for the earliest records of the battle, after all. The detached historian viewpoint wasn’t even invented until a generation later (Thucydides), for a war that practically screamed for the modern-Hollywood “irony” treatment. In fact, Zack Snyder’s film is almost the “Tora Tora Tora” of the younger set–perhaps even on the level of Rockwell’s “Four Freedoms.” If losing the reality of the thousand-yard stare is what it takes to reinvigorate pride in the Western way of life among younger people these days, I’m all for it.
