Oddly uninvolving

Rating: 7/10 (23 August 2007)

I find Zack Snyder's 300 a bit of a puzzle: I think I admired a lot of it, and I didn't dislike any of it, but it really didn't move me much one way or the other.
There's a lot to recommend this movie for. The performances are believable, the visuals are spectacular, and the battle scenes are convincing. Gruesome? I guess, though in a rather stylized way that seems to drain the life out of the whole venture (as opposed to the violence in, say, PAN'S LABYRINTH, which at times made me cringe).
Odd, then, that this film that has radically polarized its audience somehow left me as indifferent as it did. I didn't dislike it at all (it's much better than GLADIATOR, for instance), and I found its style intriguing, I just can't say it was enough to get me too worked up.