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THIS second Frank Miller graphic novel adaptation, filmed by Zack Synder, is a crazed orgy of blood lust . . . like 300 cloned Ridley Scotts let loose behind the camera. The blue-screen graphics are thick with blood and are technically superb, but when the fog of testosterone clears, it has little to recommend itself . . . certainly nothing you could call heart and soul. It is saved only by its beautiful, angular images, as if crafted like an Occidental Zhang Yimou film. It is based on the historic battle of Thermoplyae, in which 300 Spartan soldiers stood against the million-strong Persian army of Xerxes. Gerald Butler plays King Leonidas, who leads the 300 professional soldiers to certain death, leaving his wife Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) to stir support back home.

Historians believe those numbers were exaggerated, but 300 relishes in the devotion of the few, turning it into a mythic tale of superhuman masculinity and devout soldiering.

Look at it a little closer though: the threat comes from the middle east; the bogeyman is Persian; the soldiers are fighting for democracy, but nobody back home believes they should be at war; while the hopeless enemy is massacred in the thousands. The film's verdict is that they were right to go to war. It has had enormous box-office success in the US.

It would be naive to believe this country-at-war movie dressed up as myth does not strike a deep chord there.

Catch A Fire (Philip Noyce): Derek Luke, Tim Robbins, Bonnie Mbuli.

Running time: 101 minutes.
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Catch A Fire is an Apartheid drama that dovetails into a chase movie. It stars Derek Luke as Patrick Charmusso, a worker at an oil refinery in the early '80s who is mistaken for an ANC terrorist by Nic Vos, an antiterrorist interrogator. He is played by Tim Robbins with a marbles-in-his-mouth Boer accent. Charmusso is a devout family man and nonrevolutionary . . . if he keeps his head any lower, he would be eating the boots of his white superiors. But on the same day he nabs sick leave to take his young soccer team to a tournament, the oil refinery is targeted by terrorists. Vos's brutal interrogation only serves to convert Charmusso to the cause of terrorism, and he leaves his family and plans a revenge attack. Directed by veteran Philip Noyce, this is an African issues movie, part of a trend of films directed by white westerners. They can be called noble and worthy for their sharp focus. But African directors still struggle to get their own voices heard in the west . . . don't hold your breath waiting to see if acclaimed Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako's Barnako, a mordant critique of African subservience, gets a release here.