Charles Jensen | Writer

300
Dir. Zack Snyder
Starring: 600 silver-dollar man-nipples, dead cattle in the form of leather briefs, the Sunday night crowd from The Padlock [gay leather bar] as the Arcadians

Let me tell you what I love about Greece: that men were men, and that they didn’t pansy around with more than a striking black loincloth and festive cape. That their cape-clatches matched their shields. That their swords….oh, never mind.

300 is yet another thinly-veiled attempt to understand domestic terrorism as drag queen supergoddess Xerxes of Persia (is this a bar I haven’t heard of?) brings thousands of his ugliest troll friends for a camping weekend near beautiful Sparta. When not preening his many piercings, reapplying his metal-toned lip gloss, or fiddling with his many necklaces, Xerxes perfects his “bored-now” scowl and best impression of Faye Dunaway impersonating Joan Crawford impersonating a human being.

The Spartans, led by a delicious slab of man-meat, decide to hold him off at a narrow pass into Sparta. What follows is a carefully choreographed orgy of violence in washed out color film stock. It’s enough that there are about three women in this whole movie, one of whom is a bad-ass Spartan queen, because the men are either beautiful bearcubs or future stars of Falcon Films. It’s a win-win film for the gay crowd.

[honestly, I just really liked it.]