Say Sparta 300 times & you have the script.

Rating: 5/10 (21 March 2007)

For Sparta! This is Sparta. Like a Spartan. Spartan man, Spartan woman, Spartan land, Spartan movie, Sparta, Sparta, Sparta. (I wonder how many times they said Sparta?)
That pretty much sums up the dialogue of the movie. Due to the choice of using narration, it feels like you're being read a story from your grade school teacher the whole time. It makes it more difficult to emerge oneself into the movie & reach a sense of disbelief. I have problems with it not being well defined where the lines are being drawn in a historical fantasy. What parts of the story should we take as recounting history & what parts do we discard?
A couple parts I had problems with were: 1) The battles were also not suspenseful, since the Spartans were very much like using a cheat code in a video game to reach God-mode status. Then without much resistance, the Spartans put nearly no fight at the end. 2) Sparta's stance on slavery & freedom wasn't well defined. Historically weren't the Spartans also slave owners of other Mediterranean nations? Was this something that we accept as not being true? Sparta wasn't known as a great symbol of freedom, so are we supposed to ignore the fact that they were slave owners? I felt the line wasn't well drawn in this historical fantasy. 3) Why was the final deal so horrible that it had to be rejected? The Persians offered to empower Sparta, so they'd rule the Athean nations (as they wanted), they'd be richer than before & they wouldn't be enslaved. All they had to do was acknowledge that the Persian king was a god. Why were they against this? For a country built on reason, they didn't outline this very well. 4) The Spartans worshiped these ugly old men as god-like beings, and also allowed their beautiful young Spartan girls to be enslaved by them. Isn't that inconsistent with their stance against the Persians?
I should also add that for me, plot & dialogue is something I weigh more in judging a movie than some others do. The visuals were outstanding, so I'd definitely recommend this to anyone who doesn't really mind a script of clichés. It's probably great to have on TV in the background while just doing something else around the house.
Finally I'd add that I think Frank Miller's Sin City adaption into film was tremendous (A-) and would easily recommend it over this.