Visually spectacular but that's it

Rating: 5/10 (8 April 2007)

Well, I'm glad I didn't pay Â£12 to see it at the London IMAX ...
There's good and bad.
The good is that it does look amazing - the gritty and almost monochromatic visuals really add something special to the film. This approach really creates a superb historical evocation with desaturated colour and some spectacular sweeping visual panoramas. The acting is appropriate to the aims of the film, but the action is so much of the whole film that the characters definitely take second place.
The bad, for me, is everything else. The film is, as at least one other has noted, a 20 to 30 minute intro followed by a battle. The End. And yes, it's an adaption of a graphic novel from a few years back now, but there's far more testosterone spraying across the screen than blood over those 116 minutes. Basically, there's one (strong) woman in this film and everyone else is a man (or boy) trying to outdo every other man in how hard, heroic, fight- ready etc. etc. he is. No weakness. No love - save the love of battle. OK, maybe a little at a few other select moments. For me this makes the film so one-dimensional that I couldn't engage with it at all. I just can't relate to that much death-dealing, lack of compassion and male love of violence (and I am a man).
Now it was perhaps foolish of me to see a film when I knew it's subject and general gist. But I had the feeling that 300 would somehow transcended its subject. It didn't - for me. I suppose I look around this beautiful world of ours and see it trashed, subjugated and destroyed by men and their generally violent outlook to life and sitting through this seemed to simply provide even more of it. Ah well, I'm a little wiser about myself and what I want to watch I suppose.