50

Rating: 4/10 (10 March 2007)

I had some high hopes for this movie. To be blunt, my hopes crashed into the dirt and splattered into evenly sized chunks. This movie is very misleading. By misleading, I mean the trailers show off just about every good shot or sequence within the entire film. The hype and fanbase for this film reminds me a lot of that of Snakes On A Plane's. A one-liner is pretty much what the fans were looking forward to ("This is SPARTA!!!") and, lo and behold, it was received with applause in the Imax theater I payed $15 admission to.
That said, the acting in the film is pretty horrid. Not even the one-liners were done with grace; there's really just a bunch of screaming, nothing more, nothing less. That's what I'm having trouble with: both the writing and acting were bad (a deadly combination), which makes it difficult to reason with either one. Shabby writing can offset good acting, and vice versa.
The effects were good and bad throughout the film. The visual look was a little too monochromatic and became boring after a while. The blood splatter didn't quite fit the look of the film, either; it was nothing more than groups of tiny, little drops that flew into the air and even vanished when it hit the ground. The costume design was pretty and there were a few shots that worked wonders for the imagination, but certain things didn't quite fit. Such as the fat thing with cleavers for hands, I have no idea where that came from. Though, that's a fault of the graphic novel itself, taking history/legend and turning it into a laser light show for the ADD public. That's why I'm lenient towards the dull plot in this film, having been taken from a medium that's visually aesthetic above anything else.
I mentioned there were a few shots in the film that were great. That's true. But, I failed to mention that there are only a few of them. The film tries desperately to be dramatic in certain parts, mainly battle scenes, but the end result is more over-exaggerated. After about the 30th slow-mo shot, I started to become a little aggravated. Practically every swing, every jump, every release of a bow string is done in slow motion. I consider that more of a crutch, rather than a creative quality. There are also some shots that could have been done on location. Why they had to film 99.9% of the film on a green screen is beyond me.
I'm still not quite sure what to call this film. It's epic, yes, but anyone can throw a bunch of colors onto a canvas and call it "epic." In the end, whatever you've produced is pointless if it's without any real meaning, thought, or reason.
This film is meant to be visual, pure and simple, and it doesn't even achieve THAT very admirably. All I can say, and this will sound mean, is that people who enjoy watching booth- bought fireworks during July 4th will definitely love this movie. Anyone else would best spend their milk money on another film.
And yes, the title should have been 50 instead of 300. Why? Because that's basically the number of Spartans you see fighting throughout the film.