Waste of time

Rating: 1/10 (24 March 2007)

When one mentions Sparta and the Greek Cities, there are expectations regarding touch with history. If king Crucifirix from the city of Baluba met an army of million from the kingdom of Zara, I would have no problem but when a claim is made at historic data, I would like that link to be consistent. Well, in '300' this link holds only when it comes to names. Yes, there was a king Leonidas and a despot called Xerxes. Yes, Thermopyle was the place where their armies met. What is not true: the ephors were not priests, they were the only spartan body democratically elected (terms of one year, without the possibility of a second); there were two kings of Sparta; the Greek army was around 6 to 8 thousand of which 300 Spartans, the only reason Leonidas was there was because the other cities agreed to let him command; the Spartans took the field only first and last day; on last day they were not alone (in fact there were a little over a thousand Greeks, thebans and thespians); the immortals were not black ninjas, they were white clad archers with secondary weapons short spear and/or short sword; the immortals strategy was shoot and advance not charge blindly not to mention they didn't look like orcs; there were two spartan survivors of Thermopyle, not one; Leonidas died in the initial assault of Xerxes forces in the last day, not after meeting with the forces sent to encircle them in the rain of arrows ... and so on. The acting is extremely poor in the first part (which introduces us to Sparta, kind of) and absent in the rest where action flows. The visual effects are anything but original, you've seen them before. The dialog revolves around words like 'death' and 'honor' every other phrase and the few metaphors used alongside phrasal inversion make the script look like a medieval play, but definitely not ancient Greek. Why would anyone enjoy this, is beyond me.