Prepare for Glory!!!!!

Rating: 10/10 (12 March 2007)

300 roars through the post-Oscar Hollywood climate and delivers a bone-crunching, head-slicing, rip-roaring good time with a dark, twistedly delicious CGI-generated style. Essentially a dark fantasy movie-graphic novel adaptation of the 480 BC battle of Thermopylae, 300 moves with style and substance.
The mighty Persian empire looms over Greece with the threat of invasion. King Leonidas of Sparta (Gerard Butler) answers the call, defying the laws of his people by taking 300 men with him to the Thermopylae pass to battle the vast horde summoned before him.
First off, the battle sequences are amazing. Whether fighting light Persian infantry, calvary, the fearsomely and awesomely garbed Immortals, their hulking brutes, rhinos, elephants, magicians, archers, or soldiers drawn from all over the Persian Empire, the scenes of the Spartans completely owning the Persians are fast-paced and deliriously exciting as well as beautifully shot. Blood is plentiful, gushing in rich CGI gouts from the hacked and mangled corpses of the thousands of Persian dead. The scenes transition from slow-mo to FF in the individual fight scenes: for example, after the Spartan phalanx breaks and Leonidas rushes out to demolish two dozen or so Persians single-handedly, he kills a Persian in slow-mo, then FF in the lay-up to kill another, then slows down again to deliver the killing blow. It's all remarkable.
All the acting is spot-on, with Gerard Butler and Lena Hedley leading the pack as the ruling family of Sparta. The Spartans all come off wonderfully as battle-crazed nut-jobs with dark senses of humor. Xerxes is a bizarre king who seriously thinks he's a god.
300 is to date the best movie of 2007. Go see it. Now.