If You're Looking for another Braveheart or Gladiator, Keep Looking

Rating: 1/10 (25 March 2007)

This movie is awful and it had NOTHING to do with the violence like for many. I am a movie fanatic and I am most specifically a history fanatic. My fav. movies are time pieces. My fav. show on television is easily Rome. I can't tell you how excited I was about this movie. Unfortunately, it was utterly awful.
1. I DON'T CARE HOW VIOLENT IT WAS, that is not my gripe.
2. I DON'T care how historic it was. Most movies fall far short of what really happened...I get that. That is also not my gripe.
3. The dialogue was bar none pathetic. The worst i have seen in ages. People were laughing at the lines that many here have already made fun of. I rolled my eyes at least 10 times. "tonight we dine in hell" takes the cake.
4. How many times must we see the king shout to get his point across. It's supposed to be a Braveheart moment with the whole "Freeeeeeeeeeedom", but never once is it effective. It's not effective because he does it a dozen times and he does it in moments where it's not needed. We also don't care about him or his gang of suicidal warriors like we did William Wallace and his men. Why? Simple. the character development is terribly hollow. They force it on you that "Spartans can't afford to be emotional". Okay...and because of that, just realize every time you try to have your over the top powerhouse inspirational moments, they're not going to affe4ct us the same way as say in a Braveheart...because William Wallace WAS emotional...and we related to him...and cared about him, and we felt for him when he suffered loss...but in this movie...you don't allow us to gravitate to these characters. Bantering back and forth in play while they chop peoples heads off is simply not going to warm us to these people so that the "inspirational" moments have ANY affect. Like when the Captain's son is beheaded. In most movies your heart would be torn out in sorrow for the guy...but in this movie...it's just another head hitting the ground. They want to pull on your emotional strings, but they never pull it off anywhere and it's all in the setup and how much of a testosterone induced farce they set this up to be. It needed to have the dramatic pull of a Braveheart...a Gladiator...it had the storyline potential to give us that, but they butcher it from moment one and it's impossible to take ANYTHING serious.
5. The Persian king was pathetic. everything about him. he wasn't scary, he wasn't to be taken serious...he was a farce who liked to wear women's makeup. AWFUL. And how they did his voice so that he was to seem god-like...AWFUL. he seemed like a fruit-cake...nothing more. "i am nice. I will show them I am nice". that is when I said "that's it...Im out of here".
There was nothing to like about this movie...not a thing. I went in expecting it to be my fav. movie of the year bar none...and i actually walked out with 20 or so minutes to go. What a joke. I'll now go give it a 1/10 and the 1 is for the fact it was just under 2 hrs. if you're going to make an awful movie, make sure it is under 2 hrs please. They did, so they get 1 star instead of zero. Oh wait...there is no zero. My decision is even easier now.