Boring, full of clichés

Rating: 2/10 (11 March 2007)

This could have been such a good movie! Imagine showing the dilemmas of the king who has to choose between surrendering his country to overwhelming force vs. sacrificing himself and his soldiers. Imagine showing intense political arguments, debates on responsibility for other people's lives, on possibility of alliances. This has been basically reduced to endless butchery, filmed in strange colors and varied film speed (which is supposed to make the slaughter look "artistic") and accompanied by annoying drum "music". A number of stupid clichés have been thrown in, like the villain traitor who of course wants to have sex with the good king's wife, and who carries his treason reward money with him so it can spill when he's being killed and demonstrate clearly his treason. There is a beloved son whom his father patriotically chooses not to protect from going to war, and who of course dies in front of the father. And this son, this highly trained Spartan warrior is being attacked from behind from a huge distance, and despite everybody shouting at him he cannot realize that he is being attacked, and defend himself. Villains are of course ugly, and good men are beautiful. The movie suffers from visual exaggeration like many before (Troy, LOTR): there is too many soldiers, too many ships, rocks are too tall, the well is too huge and elephants are too big. But this time it is even more annoying because there is little beyond in this movie. A lot stupidities, like Spartan warriors going to war without a single bag (forget a cart) of supplies. Like this huge unprotected well in Sparta - they would lose half of population of kids and drunken people there. Like heads cut off without any bleeding from carotid arteries. So I can recommend this only to those who find delight in watching numerous impressive and barely clothed male bodies. There is also a little of half-naked female bodies, some of them quite good (the oracle and the queen), but probably too little to justify spending two hours in a movie theatre.