Not men, but broken, desperate ghosts of men.

Rating: 3/10 (23 March 2007)

A society that brutalises its young men, then literally throws them to the wolves. A primitive eugenics programme where babies are dashed against the rocks for any physical imperfection. A nihilistic suicide cult whose one ambition is to die horribly (I can only assume in an attempt to purge the effects of the aforementioned brutalisation). And those were the heroes.
I came into the cinema expecting to enjoy this movie - a bit of sword and sandal action, attractive people to look at, and fight scenes to get the blood pumping - but instead I spent the first half vaguely horrified.
The film is incredibly beautiful, just in its texture and use of light. But the plot is paper thin and the characters seem to have had all human warmth stripped from them. The light doesn't seem to touch them at all; they walk through the film desperate, unfeeling, and oblivious to their crippled emotional state. The main character's constant spitting of 'Sparta!' is obnoxious - he voices it as one would a curse - and the portrayal of the Queen boils down to a series of poorly delivered soliloquies.
The fight scenes were dramatic, but the writers give no reason for the struggle. How can you fight for honour when you cannot feel anything, and all you wish for is death?
Frankly, it is a film reminiscent of a Nazi propaganda exercise from World War Two. The Aryan perfection of the Spartans is shoved in your face. But the strength of these men does not invoke any kind of sense of safety or comfort or pride in their achievement - instead the raw, exposed state of their muscles and sinews seem to be yet another symptom of the abuse their bodies and spirits have suffered. The portrayal in the film of anyone with any kind of physical imperfection is abominable - not only are these characters held in contempt by the perfect warriors, but the plot (what there is of it) goes out of its way to justify such attitudes.
I will skip over the occasional asides that seem to be designed as subliminal anti-Muslim propaganda, and ask, what film was everyone else in the cinema watching? The bit of humour seemed to be just enough to draw people in to the empty moral code, and my friends revelled in the fight scenes as if a bit of athletics and a bit of blood was all that is needed to rouse the male spirit in sympathy.
I'm sorry, but I need more reason than that.