300 Good! But not great.

Rating: 7/10 (12 March 2007)

First of all, 300 is a good movie. It is definitely worth seeing on the big screen. I'd suggest seeing it on IMAX if it is available near you.
Frank Miller's new graphic-novel-turned-movie is just as expected. Beautiful-yet-violent images and scenery with lots of action. There are a handful of fight scenes and they are all pretty cool. There is very little "real" blood in the movie, as it is nearly all CGI... but with most all of the movie filmed with blue screen, who cares? 300 is based on the story of a group of 300 Spartans that set out against the Persian army using a strategy that would ensure an eventual victory. Surprisingly, Frank Miller's retelling of these events is fairly accurate. Of course, there are the few Miller-esquire twists that don't make sense, are out of place, are just there to be weird, or are there to make the detail of the scene that much more beautiful... but the ones that don't seem to make any sense are few and don't hurt the original story. Aside from these, the story follows along with history pretty close, which is, at least, a big plus in my book.
The fight scenes are action-packed when they show up and there's hardly anything missing in terms of "how can I make this action sequence that much more amazing?" But within these fight scenes is also where this movie lost points with me. I'd also like to say I'd personally give it a 6.5, not a 7.
While the fight scenes are definitely full of action... they are also very repetitive. There's hardly a change in formula from fight scene to fight scene and some of the camera styles (slow motion for the most part) are overused. I understand that is was literally a frame-by-frame recreation of the book... but come on guys! You are allowed to Hollywood it up a little for the sake of the film.
A very small gripe I had with the film is that there were a few characters that were introduced but were not elaborated upon. I was left saying "Hey! I wanna know more about that guy! What does he do? Can he fight? I wanna see him fight!!" Disregard anything about overzealous violence or gore. There are a few chopped off heads and limbs but nothing worse. There is really only one scene with questionable sexual material but it is a short scene and it isn't overdone by any means.
Overall, this was a good film with great art direction. A little heavy on a certain group of effects and quite a bit of repetition within the fight scenes but there is enough interesting material between the repetition and familiar effects to keep you interested for close to 2 hours. Well worth the $5-10 to see it in theaters on a large screen.
6.5 out of 10.