Decent Telling -- but inaccurate

Rating: 8/10 (17 March 2007)

I hope that this movie inspires people to read about the history of the Spartans and the Greek cities that fought bravely against the Persians. I offer this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300_Spartans for those interested to give a brief background and history about the battle. For those not interested in reading, I would suggest renting/buying the 1962 movie "300 Spartans" to get a better feel for the historical part of this tale. First, this is a super bastardization of the tale. There is very little historical value whatsoever in this movie or in the graphic novel. If you are looking for historic accounts, do not go to this film. This is pure entertainment--plain and simple. The visualizations are wonderful, the movie is nicely paced and it is highly entertaining. Acting is not at a premium though. Butler just constantly screams into the camera, rather than talking, and he plays his character more like a WWF wrestler than a Greek hero. Most of the dialog came straight out of the historical (see link) quotes or from the 1962 movie. I enjoyed this movie and I could accept 90% of the Hollywood/graphic novel liberties that took the place of historic accuracy. The one thing that I found highly amusing was that the Greeks were not armored clad (as they would have been). As I stated earlier, WWF was more the feel of the movie--muscled men wearing only helmets, but no body armor. Only an idiot soldier would wear just his helmet and history shows that the Spartans did wear beautifully crafted leather armor. I give this movie an 8 for it's entertainment value and it's nicely shot battle scenes. Had there been a little more historical accuracy, and a little better acting, this could have been a 10.