It's horrible and great at the same time.

Rating: 6/10 (27 May 2007)

This film does not accommodate the thinkers of the crowd, nor is it one for the historians. "300", in all essence, is a man-movie through and through, not just for the alpha mentality of its battle-hardened Spartan men, but also in every other aspect from politics to the context of its sex scenes to the very simplistic, defiant and angry dialog. If there were ever a film that could define Rosie Odonnell's most ill perceived personal hell, this is it. However, it is not without a woman's scorn or influence. In a nutshell, 300 will leave you disgruntled if you demand political correctness, sexual equality, historical accuracy or believability from your movie experiences.
What this movie brings to the table is quite simple: barbaric mutiny displayed in epic proportions. It is full of psychological scare-tactics warriors would use to instill fear in their enemies, from massive walls built with corpses to a messenger that carries with him the crowned skulls of once defiant Kings. Couple that with the visuals and camera work that is nothing short of impressive and awe-inspiring and you'll have many reasons to like this movie.
That said, there are things about this film that will ruin it for you, in my opinion, and will prevent it from making the all-time lists of top movies made for men. There are a few instances where CGI is overdone to the point of cheesy. There are occasions where actors are forced to step out of character to accommodate a dialog that is surprisingly uncharacteristic of the roles they are playing, and it's very noticeable. There's also one scene that the movie had invested time to build up to, intended to be serious and inspiring, but when the scene finally comes the main actor seems to be on the verge of laughing about something that happened on the set, like a botched take.
However, even though there are just a couple of over-the-top acting moments and a few, very weak, two or three line castings, I cannot blame the acting at all. In fact, there's not only some good acting to be found in this film, but some of the most emotionally impactive acting can be found when there is no dialog at all: Testimony to the fact that it's just a horrible script meshed with several careless director oversights.
On a side note, using industrial-type music in the score, even though it's used sparingly, doesn't exactly help the movie either. Once this film becomes dated, it's going to be much worse.
Overall, you should go into this movie expecting nothing more than a lot of grim eye candy, valiant chest-beating and twisted concepts that would make Vlad the Impaler proud.