Dazzling blue-screen work, but utterly worthless and unwatchable

Rating: 1/10 (4 June 2007)

Prepare to run from the theater. It's that mind-bogglingly bad.
The racism, homophobia, nationalism, warmongering, fear-mongering, and fascism are both artificial and ballooned into levels that are childishly inappropriate even by Hollywood standards.
The constant references by Spartans to their love of "freedom" (and how it would be replaced with servitude if they bowed down to the Persian king) are laughable, since the plot revolves around a Spartan KING protecting his KINGdom. He is, in fact, the only "free" person in Sparta; the other 299 warriors must be too hopped up on adrenalin and bravado to have a single political thought while they volunteer to die.
(When will sword-and-sandal movie makers give up on trying to tie violent kingdoms together with anachronistic ideas of freedom and fair society? It's like making a pro wrestler put on a dress and serve tea.) The movie portrays all (good) Spartans as physically perfect white folks, all the way down to immaculate hair, perfect teeth, and immaculate clothing. All "bad" characters have physical defects (for which they are scorned) or are made androgynous/homosexual or Asian or African.
Even the math involved is ludicrous and utterly unconsidered by the scriptwriters: the number "300" is used again and again, though the size of the "300" falls and expands repeatedly. The sun is blotted out by arrows shot at the Spartans, yet nobody (apparently) considered or cared how impossible it would have been to fire that many arrows. (And the number of arrows that land is barely a handful.) The number of soldiers from Sparta is supposedly "300", yet we never see more than 20 to 40.
The logistics are as empty-headed as every other part of the film: soldiers travel endlessly without food or foot sores or bedding. Swords never break or dull. Flies never buzz around corpses.
In short, this is a nightmarishly childish, moronic piece of filth with no excuse and no redeeming qualities. Nobody could like this film, except perhaps a violent, heavily medicated, muddle-headed, neo-Nazi 5-year-old boy who doesn't know what "freedom" means yet.
If this film has any positive value, it might be as a cautionary tale: an example of conservative, militaristic madness (like "reefer madness") that hyperbolizes the worst parts of the culture that produces it. While trying to stir up patriotism and pro-military sentiment, this film merely turns those concepts into (rightfully) laughable yet nauseating material.