Nice visuals and action, but that's about it.

Rating: Null/10 (17 April 2007)

I'll name the good points first. The visuals were spectacular. Although certain scenes felt kind of fake and felt like Gladiator rip offs. The battles were brutal and well filmed. Nice action. The CGI was good. That's all the good stuff.
Now on to the bad. Firstly, on an intellectual level, did this movie offer any new ideas or explore any new areas that gives the viewer something to think about and prove itself to be somewhat intelligent? No. Did it offer any kind of message? Yes, that war is good for glory, patriotism etc. I'm sorry but in today's day and age it's hard to stomach any film that depicts war as this glorious thing that is worth killing and dying for. If it was made in the 30s it might be excused, today it just felt like damn propaganda. With all the violence and blood and brutal killings, the film still tried to justify it saying it's all for freedom, and glory, and country and all that crap. After all those Vietnam films you think people have learnt a lesson.
Secondly, did it have any depth? No. The ideas it presented seem to have been written by a 5 year old. The lack of moral ambiguity to the whole situation and the proud talks of war is revolting. It doesn't help that Sparta is not known as the nicest country back then. The movie seems to only scrape the surface regarding the whole situation of killing so many people when it could've ventured a little deeper to develop this idea of whether it was worth it and whether what they were doing really was justice. In 300 the enemy were presented as monsters and far lesser beings that should be slaughtered. Presenting the enemy as one dimensional demons have been used many times in the past in propaganda war films.
Thirdly, the unnecessary violence and nudity. The blood and guts got so repetitive and felt like a dumb action movie. The electric guitar music in a story set in the Spartan period REALLY made it feel cheap and dumb as well. And then there's the unnecessary nudity and sex scenes. When Leonidas and his Queen were about to make love and the screen faded to black I thought "ok, good". And then it faded in again and showed some explicit sex scene for 1 second and faded out again. Faded in again, sex scene, fade out again. Fade in, he takes her up the ass, fade out. The sequence borders on pornographic along with the unnecessarily revealing Oracle sequence, and the anal sex sequence. Was it necessary to the storyline in anyway? NO. It felt like it was merely there to satisfy shallow viewers who wanted to see some boobies. Pulls the integrity of the film RIGHT DOWN.
Forthly, no explanation were given for the various monsters in this film. Not to mention the huge elephants that fell rather comically to their deaths and the abomination from Warcraft III to chop off a Persian captains head in slow motion. And the Hunchback of Notre Dame also escaped here too, serving no purpose to the story and had no closure in the end.
Finally, the movie settles on a wheat field taken directly out of Gladiator with a wounded soldier who has learnt nothing about war but instead had been brainwashed into thinking it was actually something glorious and that Leonidas actually died honourably. The movie ended with a huge army charging for "glory, for FREEDOM!!!" and another bloody slaughter is to start once again. Without all the blood and brutal violence and nice visuals, was this movie good for anything? It doesn't purify the soul in any way. It doesn't make you THINK in anyway. It was at best mindless entertainment for those who wanted to relax their brains and watch some ultra violence. But how does that make this a good movie? No matter how good the action sequences were, no matter how impressive the CGI and visuals were a movie is nothing without ideas, characters and a fulfilling story with many themes to ponder. If it wasn't a movie that doesn't take itself too seriously, then I really could've done without the ultra violence and nudity. I really fail to see how this movie is any different (or should I say, superior) to other dumb action movies and have no idea why it's rated so high on IMDb. (I am glad however that the rating is dropping) That's about it folks. Notice I didn't mention how it was historically inaccurate and all that because I, unlike what most 300 fans presume, understand that a movie doesn't have to be historically accurate to be good. I judged this movie as a movie and the conclusion was it was a dumb action film for dumb action fans.