Not as racist as I was expecting.

Rating: 8/10 (17 March 2007)

Having read articles about how racist the film was against Persians, I was hesitant to see the movie. When I did go with a friend from out of town, I was not only stunned by the cinematography, but I was surprised to find that it didn't seem that racist at all. While it wasn't 100% historically accurate, it worked as a movie. I don't think many people really expect historical fiction films to be all that accurate these days, so that seems like a moot point to me. I will agree that the Persians are not shown in a great light, but it's also a film glorifying the 300 Spartans... like any film that has an unlikely victor, the enemy is made very unlikeable (I know that Ancient Persia was very civilized though it is true that Xerxes was more brutal than his predecessors). Whether that means that people who like the movie are racist is something very different. I know I'm not (my best friend is half-Iranian and my parents used to live in Iran). Perhaps because I haven't heard a single person actually interpret the film to justify racism other than people arguing against it for being racist in the first place, I don't find it to be a compelling point.