Great trailers do not a great movie make.....

Rating: 6/10 (28 March 2007)

WARNING: CONTAINS ONE SPOILER BELOW!! Although forty is the same age as King Leonidas in this film, it also puts me outside what they call "the target demographic", and I guess my age has a lot to do with my lower-than-average rating.
I have seen too many great films to be overly impressed by films like this (and Troy) which have a stupendous amount of available back story and sizeable budgets yet still manage to fluff their lines. Yes, the film is stunning. Yes, it is faithful to the graphic novel (if not historical fact) while still applying enough of it's own ideas (including one truly memorable scene that was almost worth the overpriced IMAX admission on it's own) Yes, the male leads mostly hold their own (especially Leonidas's captain, who, funnily enough, I think played a similar character; to equally good effect, in Troy)And the script is generally okay (at it's best when lifting direct from the graphic novel - at it's worst resembles something written by a violent youth offender who has yet to lose his virginity) But the flaws had too much of an impact on this viewer's pleasure to be ignored. Though the Iranian government has probably been overly sensitive in their condemnation of the film (perhaps only the Iranian hippies and punks should be truly angered)the Persians (and every other baddie in the film) are depicted as irredeemable b*******; alternating only between the immoral states of cowardice, vindictiveness, hubris and hedonism. Why, the filmmakers even tag some of the baddies with freaky faces, lest we start to feel any sympathy towards them. Oh yes and there is a rape scene as well. It happens to the principal actress and would I suppose have been mildly emotionally involving - if only she could act. Mind you, she's better than the lone Spartan baddie, who appears to think he's in a completely different film. I can't abide films that won't trust me to make up my own mind about the bad guys. Even Troy was not so simplistic on this level. Also, would it have been too much trouble to ask actors, playing people that all COME FROM THE SAME REGION to try to keep their accents consistent? Perhaps if they had spent as much time acting as working out, this flaw wouldn't have been so prominent. Then again they could have just CGI'd the accents as they so obviously did (another flaw) with some of the actor's six-packs. But these are the minor points. Far more injurious to my enjoyment were the three ludicrous scenes which produced howling unintentional laughs from myself and other members of the packed audience. I won't describe them all, or in detail here. But a spoiler is necessary for even the outline of one scene.
S-P-O-I-L-E-R Suffice to say that when you are taken out of a film by the realization that the protagonist and antagonist are positioned, with the taller of the two behind and with his hands on the shoulder of the other during an exchange of unintentionally camp dialogue; it is hard to take things seriously from that point on. The people who were at the test screening of this film should never, ever be invited to see films for free again! And as for the antagonist,; what is the point of endowing Xeres with certain impressive CGI enhancements if not allowing him to use those attributes on the battlefield? He would certainly have made a more formidable and engrossing foe than the characterless drones who offered themselves up for slaughter. This is where the producers and directors highlight their most obvious flaw: a lack of imagination and risk to take this film beyond the good-very good, and into the realm of great. At time of writing it has already dropped out of the top 250. Give it a couple more years, as the novelty of the visuals and SAS recruitment style bravado wear off in say, a way that the storyline of the original Matrix won't, and it won't even be in the top 1000.
Before I forget: Extra kudos to the CGI team for editing out the shouty Leonidas's spittle AND to the crew operating the targeted wind machine that charmed all those shy female nipples out of hiding:-)