Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Description
In the 5th-century B.C., King Leonidas of Sparta has only his 300 bodyguards to stand with him against an invasion by the 60,000 men of the Persian army. Their heroic stand against the invasion gives the other Greek city-states time to organize a large fighting force and ultimately defeat the Persians. (NR).
Subjects
Original publication date
2003-11-14
Media reviews
Slate
As played by the admittedly handsome and intriguing Paul Bettany, Maturin is no more than a good doctor with finer feelings and a passion for natural history. At one point he is made to say in an English accent that he is Irish—but that's the only hint we get. In the books, for example, he
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quarrels badly with Aubrey about Lord Nelson's support for slavery. But here a superficial buddy movie is born out of one of the subtlest and richest and most paradoxical male relationships since Holmes and Watson...
In one respect the action lives up to its fictional and actual inspiration. This was the age of Bligh and Cook and of voyages of discovery as well as conquest, and when HMS Surprise makes landfall in the Galapagos Islands we get a beautifully filmed sequence about how the dawn of scientific enlightenment might have felt. It wasn't that long a stretch between the Bounty and the Beagle, and Peter Weir conveys the idea while abolishing Maturin's interest in the enlightenment as a human rather than naturalistic project. The whiskers may sometimes look ferocious, and the role of Killick the manservant as rendered by David Threlfall was so splendid that I thought at first it was Eric Idle under another coating of whiskers, but the point is lost. Show Less
Awards
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