One of the best comic book adaptations to date...

Rating: 9/10 (24 July 2007)

300 probably won't win any awards for depth, but it's a very strong, entertaining film. Whatever criteria you use to separate the genre Action Films from The Rest, use it, because you won't be deriving something incredibly meaningful, deep, or layered from 300. It reinforces the ideas of responsibility, honor, courage, in a very old-fashioned and perhaps anachronistic method which may have you in fits of either indignation or triumph... depending how highly you crave a movie that mythologizes a historical event into a pitched battle between good and evil.
Leonidas and his 300 Spartans combat the oncoming hordes of Persians who have been turned into, well, flesh-eating mutants. Actually there is a mix of barbarian, exotic cultures represented as weirdly painted, antler-donning lemmings that wilt under the mighty defence of the Spartans, but their inclusion is welcome. It serves to highlight that 300 is historical fiction as traditionally was done by the Greeks - truths intertwined with dramatic license, a method necessitated by the limited media available to ancient Greeks.
The Spartans go to war in very little armor. If this bothers you, don't be alarmed. You're not gay because you're watching underwear model physiques fighting. There are many more sports done by men that are a million times gayer. What is very pleasant however about the fighting is that the cuts are very few and far between, the editing preserves the integrity of the continuous fight, and it slows down so we can watch in glee as spears rend flesh, or shields smash jaws. To a hardcore action film fan, this is very important. You don't want your fight scenes edited by ADD-afflicted crackheads.
There's just enough sex to remind you what the demographic is, which I think is 18 to 36 year old males. The green screens, surprisingly don't interrupt the believability of the picture and don't stunt the excitement of the fighting.
The one thing that I do enjoy VERY much and is why I gave this movie such a high rating is that the film was adapted for the screen. Unlike Sin City, which comes from the same writer/director team if I'm not mistaken, 300 does not follow the comic word for word. Even though 300 the comic, with its mute protagonist and straightforward, undramatized historical perspective would be perfect just for that kind of film... the movie adds just enough dramatic license to make things interesting for people who've read Frank Miller's work, over and over and over. A good adaptation in its own right - one of the best to hit the screens yet.