![]() Leonidas offers Ephialtes other roles but denies his request and a traitor is born. Ephialtes (Andrew Tiernan, "The Pianist") is a deformed hunchback (think the bulkier counterpart to Rings's Gollum), a Spartan saved when his mother fled his homeland, who begs to fight with Leonidas's men and tells of the goat path which allowed him to approach from their rear. After insulting Xerxes by killing his messengers, Leonidas is forbidden by law to go into battle, but Queen Gorgo's (Lena Headey, "The Brothers Grimm," "Imagine Me & You") advice mirrors his own morality and so he 'goes for a walk' with a few hundred 'bodyguards.' Arriving at the Hot Gates of Thermopylae, where they will have a geographical advantage over approaching Persians, Leonidas is finally approached by the man who has been following them. Using only his wits to survive a harsh winter, Leonidas slays a giant wolf by leading it into a rocky crevice, an event that foreshadows his later famous battle. At the age of seven, a boy is separated from his mother and sent into a world of violent military training. At birth, any sign of weakness condemns the child to death. Dilios (David Wenham, "The Proposition"), the storyteller of the bunch, narrates Leonidas's early years which also serve to educate on the training of the Spartan male. If forgiven some fan-boy pandering and homophobia, "300" is a magnificent spectacle and testament to heroic sacrifice in the name of freedom. ![]() But the warrior Spartans were free men and Leonidas defied his council and the Oracle to stand and fight with only "300." Using the same techniques that brought graphic novelist Frank Miller's "Sin City" to the big screen, cowriter (with Kurt Johnstad and Michael Gordon)/director Zack Snyder (2004's "Dawn of the Dead") produces a far more awe-inspiring result by taking history and making it legend. When ancient Greece was the cradle of democracy, it was threatened by the Persian God-King Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro, "Carandiru," Paulo on TV's "Lost") who sent a Messenger (Peter Mensah, "Tears of the Sun," "Hidalgo") to Spartan King Leonidas (Gerard Butler, "Dear Frankie," "The Phantom of the Opera") promising him power and reaches if he would just kneel before him.
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