Pretty cute.

Rating: 4/10 (17 September 2008)

First of all, I'd like to say that I liked this movie. All the bad things I am going to talk about in a second don't mean that I didn't have a decently good time. 300 was enjoyable to an extent. Okay? Here we go.
The first big problem with 300 was the cheese. From the opening credits, it relives all doubt you had that this movie is meant to be taken seriously by giving you the cheesiest narrator in nearly a millennium. From that point, it delves into a cheesy butt scene, strait out of something you'd see in a comedy, which got me laughing. And if that wasn't enough to make you wonder if this is the same hardcore action movie that was advertised, the director appeases the penises of horny 12-year-old boys (who have never touched a chick in their lives) and 50-year-old men (who secretly find their wives more boring than the opening of this movie) enough boobs to hold them over through the boring, unnecessary characterization scenes.
That in itself is 300's second flaw. Every action movie and their pet cow seem to think they have to characterize their characters. Okay, pause with me for a second. When was the last time you saw a standard action movielike thiswhere you actually remembered the name of the main character, much less the names of the secondary characters and the names of the secondary character's wives and children? I can't, and I doubt you can either. We don't see action movies for characters, we see them for action. The characters are fodder. They die. We don't care. What we do care about is seeing the next pointless character explode and his guts go all over the screen, but somehow action movie directors don't understand their audience. Directorslike Zack Snyderassume they have to be "good storytellers" and take up 30 to 50 minutes of screen time to give their characters have some sort of characterization. The problem with that is the characterization is always shallow and they end up characterizing a cliché that is flatter than if they hadn't take up all that time to characterize. In the end, it leaves you bored and you STILL can care less about the characters. 300 does this exact thing, just like every other action movie on the planet. The action scenes are few and far between. Most of the screen time is characterizing, and I still could care less who lived and who died. All I wish is action directors would LISTEN to their FANS and stop using this clichéd, pointless method. If 300 was nothing but battle from opening to closing, I would have given it a higher score, but I can't because of the lame, boring attempt ad characterization.
The third main flaw with 300 is the lack of blood. I heard from all my friends that this was a gorefest, but it wasn't even close to one. Even the back cover promises "BLOOD, thunder, and awe". But where was the blood? I saw a few dots of it every few minutes, but nothing more. The decapitations, for God's sake, didn't even have any blood! People are stabbed, shot with arrows, cut apartbut all the most blood that is show is a few dots flying across the screen. If it was up to me, I would have EASYLY given this a PG-13 rating.
Forth main flaw was the battle scenes themselves. Whoever honestly thinks these are some of the most epic battle scenes of all time are joking. The battle scenes are very stylish and fun, but to call them intense or epic is a joke. Compared to LotR: Return of the King, the battles seem minute. Compared to CoN: Prince Caspian, the battles seem slow-paced and lack any intensity at all. Compared to Braveheart, the battle scenes seem tame. With that said, I like them better than most of those simply because they were stylish and fun and visually pleasing, but they were nowhere near truly epic. A lot of them were small enough to have taken place in my backyard. The vast, expansive Persian army was broken up into bite-sized groups in every single battle, never once attacking with full force. Sorry, but that just seemed lame to me.
Overall, though, my opinion is positive. All the things I just pointed out could be overlooked if you had fun, and I did. After so many boring action movies this side of the new millennium, this one really stands out, even though it is pretty typical. It's visually stunning, and it isn't as toned down as it could have been. Just grab some friends and have funif you try taking this movie seriously you'll hate it. The story is cute, the action is fun and refreshing, some of the characters are memorable, and it has a nice soundtrack. If I wanted to, I could tear this movie apart even further with criticism, but I'm not going to. It's a breath of fresh air for the action fan, even if it's nothing new or innovative.
4/10