It's a big-budget, violent and sometimes silly epic, which works as a blood-drugged eye candy.

Rating: 6/10 (18 October 2007)

My take: A triumph in visual style over substance.
Historical epics have been taken seriously with latest blockbuster hits like TROY and KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. It's just about time that Hollywood make their own material out of it. Thus, 300 is born. Matched with Frank Miller's gut-wrenching dark epic and Zack Snyder's violent touches, 300 is exactly as what pop-entertainment is when combined with history. The movie is too silly to be a film to watch during history class, yet, watching it as a pop-entertainment flick, it works in its own ways. It's a big-budget, violent and sometimes silly epic, which works as a blood-drugged eye candy.
The film is supposed to portray the events involving the Spartans, lead by King Leonidas (played by Gerald Butler), against the invading Persians. But, the film has a lot of over-the-top action sequences and bizarre creatures, I doubt that this i very far from what actually happened. But still, Hollywood tends to do a lot of alternations, even when it comes to reality. The film is simply fantasy, which is a good thing, because many epic movie viewers are crazy for this kind of films because we are introduced to a lot of elaborate battles, strange creatures, vivid-named (and described) characters and many other things.
300 offers all those things. Even if I found some of the battle sequences ridiculous, they are still very interesting to watch simply as "Oh! It only happens in the movies" kind of fun. The characters aren't much exercised, but the performances by the actors playing these characters are pretty good. The best thing, though, and probably the most interesting thing about this film is its resemblance to the graphic novels by Frank Miller. Indeed, it's over-the-top (perhaps way too), but this is exactly how it was envisioned in Miller's story, and Snyder, a specialist of this thing (after making the remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD), does it terrifically, giving it also an excellent video game-like experience.
It may be far from being the best film of its year, but it was definitely a good one. A big-budget epic that knows exactly what to give the audience.
Rating: *** out of 5.