Not THAT Great

Rating: 6/10 (18 March 2007)

From an action standpoint, this movie is excellent. It is filled with slow-motion stabs and complex, computer-animated battle scenes. I enjoyed the violence and fantastic battles. Also, I thought that the cuts throughout the movie were epic. As 300 is an epic adventure, many shots focused in slow motion on a soldier's facial expressions. These shots provided a change of pace in the action sequences, and I felt that the combat scenes stayed true to a graphic novel form while still being entertaining in a movie.
This movie has strong action, but action only takes up so much of the movie. Instead, there are drawn-out, poor dialogs to fill the rest of the movie. I began to laugh after the lines "It's not your arm anymore," and "Traitor!" Really, many people near me in the theater either laughed or smiled. I think this film focuses more on the emotions of characters than the audience wants or feels able to accept.
I watched 300 in an IMAX theater--the best venue to see it. I left with my friends, and we talked about our enjoyment of the action. We discussed which characters "beasted" and which Persian soldiers looked the coolest. We all recognized that while we found the movie fun, it lacked the full dialog and emotion that a truly great movie requires. Is 300 worth seeing? Yes. Is it a great movie? No.