Madness? This is, well, yeah it's a bit mad

Rating: 7/10 (8 April 2007)

Let me just start off by saying this... this is no Gladiator. This is no Braveheart, and this is definitely NO Dances with Wolves. The acting is laughable at best, the characters could have been cut out of cereal boxes, and Gerard Butler, as able and gruff as he is, doesn't do anything to distinguish himself from the Maximus's or Achilles of previous war epics. In fact, you will walk away from the cinema with the rare privilege of having watched a 2 hour historical epic without learning anything, well, historical. But by golly is it 2 hours well spent. You will not, and I repeat NOT, see a more manly film this side of the millennium. What 300 lacks in the brains department, it makes up for in the "I-didn't-know-it-was-possible-for-mere-mortals-to-do-that-and-live" factor. The film sticks closer to the Frank Miller graphic novel than the real story, and it is all the better for it. The film is visually stunning, raising the bar in a way that will probably remain untouched until another Frank Millar adaption. And, guys, this is not the film you will want to take your girlfriend to see, unless she has done a 5-year stretch in Alcatraz. Heads are lopped off and blood is spilled in the yearning reverence that is normally reserved for the ballet. Eyes are gouged, every outward body part which is detatchable is hacked off... let's just say that a lot more than 300 people die in this film. It almost makes you want to cry when the 300 Spartans, inevitably bite the dust in the heart-pounding finale... almost. For this is the film's biggest disappointment: human emotion. You just don't feel connected to the men in the film as you did to Russell Crowe's Maximus or, dare I say it, Brad Pitt's Achilles. When the men are brutally brought down by the sun-blotting arrows shown in the trailer, a drifting shot over the corpses should make you well up and hug the nearest person to you in the cinema, but it doesn't. You should feel the pain of Queen Gorgo as she weeps for her husband, but you don't. Ultimately, the noticeable lack of emotion in the film stops a great film from being unforgettable.