Timmy, do you like movies about gladiators?

Rating: 2/10 (20 March 2007)

The first time that I saw a preview for 300 I was giddy. It looked like a visually stunning fantasy, based (loosely) on the epic of King Leonidas and his 300 men. I was sure that I'd love it: I loved Sin City, I enjoy Frank Miller's graphic novels, and I even liked director Zack Snyder's 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead. Nothing could have prepared me for the sheer stupidity and boredom that encompassed the two hours that I spent in the theater watching this crap-fest.
First off, the only (relative) historical accuracy in the film was the concept: King Leonidas and his 300 Spartan soldiers facing an insurmountable Persian army. You can take that detail however you want. Personally, I have no problem with authors taking liberties when adapting from books, I was just hoping for a bit more depth than the provided "oiled-down men clad in capes and loin-cloths fight giant sci-fi monsters." Even more annoying than the lack of accuracy was the blatant inaccuracies: One million Persian soldiers? Even the most generous estimates put the size of the Persian force at no larger than 500,000 (probably closer to 100,000).
Second, it looked like a cartoon. Now I understand that a lot of people will defend this as "stylistic interpretation," or something to that affect, and that's fine. I'm simply saying that nothing looked real in this movie: not the actors, not the landscapes, and certainly not the battles. It looked like CG and surprise, IT WAS!
Third, the dialogue could have been better written by a high-school creative writing flunky. It was so bad that it was laughable. Practically every line delivered by King Leonidas begins with him forcefully yelling "Spartans," then going into some ridiculous diatribe about how they're going to show the enemy what pain really is, or they're going to show the enemy what it means to fear, or they're going to blah, blah, blah... The worst writing in the film probably comes when Leonidas and Xerxes meet for the first time. Not only is it laugh out loud funny, it is also quite possibly the most blatant homo-eroticism that I have ever seen on the big screen. Imagine this if you will: Xerxes is gently caressing the neck of Leonidas, pushed up so close to his back side as to make me personally uncomfortable. He puts his lips up to the King's ear and says something to the effect of "All I want you to do is to come before me and kneel. If you do this all the worlds pleasure will be yours." Then Leonidas turns towards him indignantly and says something like "We Spartans are strong, and hard, getting us to kneel may not be as pleasurable as you think." Now this may not be exactly what was spoken, but if not, it's basically interchangeable with whatever dialogue was on-screen.
The last point I want to make (but most certainly not the last point that could be made), is the acting in this movie. It is awful, and not in that John Travolta, Battlefield Earth, so bad it's funny sort of way. It is just painful to watch. Leonidas was two moods: angry and more angry. Xerxes has two moods: angry and disheveled. Theron has one mood: treacherous (and I guess kind of angry). If you are beginning to see a theme here, you are correct. All the characters in this movie are boring and one-dimensional, and the acting sucks.
Last thing. I gave this movie two stars instead of one because if you look for the homo-erotic innuendos, it actually becomes quite funny.