Severely disappointed; flabby an unnecessary; weird obsession with mutants. Also a goat headed person whose existence has yet to be explained

Rating: 3/10 (26 March 2007)

It could have been great, but alas it was not so.
So, first the good news: the visuals.
Gerard Butler was perfect as Leonidas, the visuals were stunning and the fight scenes breathtaking. The look and feel of the movie was straight out of the graphic novel, assisted no end by Frank Miller's input. The crushed bronzes and crimson, the subdued lighting and the Gothic shadowplay all come together to add real depth to the action, which when it works is nothing short of jaw dropping. Admittedly, Snyder, overuses the 'slow motion' button, keeping one finger hovering over it, stopping and starting in a quest for every cooler visuals, which is a bit much - but all this aside, the man really knows how to make a fight look pretty. The soundtrack, too, is effective, with a raucous, serious theme throughout (thankfully avoiding the annoying 'wobbly voiced singing' of Troy/Gladiator/Kingdom of Heaven/whatever), keeping things ticking over nicely.
Now, of course, the bad: everything else.
For starters, the plight of Queen Gorgo of Sparta really doesn't interest, and the Token English Bad Guy thrown in there for her to overcome For The Greater Good is so ham-fisted that he may as well have 'bad news, honey' tattooed on his forehead. It feels tacked on, an obvious and shallow attempt to add depth to a movie which really doesn't need it, and I defy anyone to really say they cared when her conflict was resolved. Spartan high politics? Get back to the fight!
Next, is the portrayal of the Persians. I'm normally quite bothered by films where they purport to display even handedness and historical accuracy but end up with an abomination, but I was willing to give this a wide berth. 300 isn't that kind of movie - it's about the essence of a story, told through a simple, moralistic viewpoint, and so despite being highly familiar with the period I wasn't about to start shouting about how wrong they got it. What I do care about is the undercurrent of racism that pervades this movie, much more so than that of the graphic novel. The Persians are portrayed as overly decadent, fawning cowards led by an androgynous, nine foot tall creature, all of whom are tellingly black or Asian. As if to heighten this weird display of Xenophobia, for some unknown reason, every anonymous footsoldier is horribly deformed - at one point the mask of a Persian Immortal is pulled back to see Freddy Kreuger's hotter brother: the untutored would think this were standard procedure, as the king's harem is also packed with scarred freaks and weirdos. Why this choice was made I do not know - it certainly does nothing to highlight the differences between Greek and alien, nor does it serve to illustrate what they stand to lose. Surely the fight that the Spartans fought for freedom was a weighty enough choice?
This obsession with deformity continues through to Ephialtes the traitor - given a far less sympathetic look-in than in the original graphic novel. Whereas previously he was brave, strong and tragically cursed, here he is viewed as a whipped cur, a snivelling coward who in the end cannot meet Leonidas' eye. Stripped of his misplaced nobility, the depths of his fall from grace (such as it was), he now stands as a comedy character, an 'igor' from frankenstein.
Lastly, and this is more significant than all of the other points, is David 'Faramir' Wenham's boring, weedy narration, which, I'm sorry, did nothing for himself or the movie. His voice lacked passion, pitched somewhere between 'learned scholar' and 'hardcore warrior' and missing both. This seriously prevented me from suspending my disbelief, and ultimately ruined the movie.
A common theme of everyone I've spoken to who's seen this shambolic hulk of a movie is 'it looks spectacular but there's not much to it'. The consensus is that the film's flaws are compensated for by the film's looks: the question for most is whether the good points, of which there are many, can outweigh the bad, of which I believe there are many more. It didn't work for me - perhaps I was too familiar with the source, and the event itself. But if that's the best that can be said about a movie, any movie, then something seriously wrong has happened, and that the notion of style over substance is an all too damaging trend in modern cinema.
Surely that's not a good sign?