Essentially a Greek-themed Kung-Fu movie totally lacking in meaning or depth

Rating: 2/10 (25 May 2007)

"300" is one of those truly amazing films that can only be made by someone who has never seen a single second of war or combat themselves. Full of simplistic bombast, silly nationalistic speeches, and 1000 yards of black spandex jockstraps, "300" rates as one of the most juvenile movies releases in the past five years. Even if one can manage to suspend all knowledge of the real history of Greece and Persia (not to mention Greek geography, agriculture, weapons technology, and basic Spartan sociology), even if one knows nothing of Newtonian physics, and even if you can believe that the world is populated by freakish mutants, there is nothing to recommend this film. The soundtrack sucks (reminding me of watching Flash Gordon without the expected camp factor from watching Flash Gordon), the CG is bad (from a wolf that looks more like a wet cheetah to an amazingly poorly produced standing vertical leap made by the king on his way to the oracle (she is the only good thing in this movie- lets see more of her in the future)), the script is ludicrous (and made no better by the acting that, if called wooden, would be an insult to wooden actors the world over), and the costumes and fake facial hair are downright hilarious. The complete bastardization of the story of the battle of thermopylae, the 100s of anachronisms (I understand this is not a documentary but a work of art, well, maybe not art- fart sounds more like it), the lackluster cast, and the truly low grade writing all produce a film that ranks among the worst I've seen this year. Like most Kung-Fu movies, with heroes that fly through the air, villains that happily wait to take on the hero one-on-one despite numerical superiority, flesh wounds for heroes, mortal wounds for villains, and so on and so on, watching this movie REQUIRES the complete suspension of belief. Even then its tedious and too stylized to be any fun as a straight swords and sandals movie, more akin to Conan or Red Sonja than anything else. 2/10 stars- one for the oracle, one for pity.