Pretty Pictures Alone Don't Cut It

Rating: 2/10 (27 January 2008)

After skipping this movie in the theater, I rented it on the recommendation of some friends who thought it a fun action flick.
I don't know what to say to them.
Sweet lord, this is an awful movie! Ten minutes into it, I was praying for someone to spear the narrator, who spoiling what little plausible drama there was by constantly spouting overwrought, simple-minded blowhard macho declarations that would not have been out of place in an old Ed Wood flick like "Plan 8 From Outer Space". Gerard Butler and Lena Headly do their best to sell their characters, but every scene is undercut by the ridiculous jockey shorts and long red cloaks the Spartans wear by way of costumes. More so when, in several non-combat scenes, the actors seem to be treading carefully to avoid tripping over their cloaks.
The number of perfectly sculpted, shaved, and oiled male bodies constantly on display suggests that what the director really wanted to make was a gay porn version of "Spartacus". From the clips I'd seen before, I harkened back to the bad old days of Italian body-builder films about Hercules and various gladiators. Actually looking at the film, this comparison didn't work. In the old, cheesy Italian movies, the actors where sculpted and stiff above and below their necklines. In "300", there are some good actors at work, but their realistic, emotive faces look like they were pasted on their pale, polished chests.
There are any number of things weirdly wrong with this movie. In spite of all the money and CGI expended on it, the battle scenes look underpopulated and cheap. At no point was I ever convinced that there were actually a full 300 Spartans following Leonidas around. Fifty, tops, in the wheat field shot, where they are walking down an immaculately mowed lane between the stalks of grain. Don't believe for a minute the director's claim the movie is "90% accurate" historically. There is virtually nothing here other than a few scenes on Spartan culture that ever existed in anything but the writer or director's sculpted and well-oiled imaginations.
I suppose than anyone who can suspend their disbelief enough to enjoy pro wrestling can enjoy "300" at that level, and apparently enough people did to make it a box office success. However, for anyone else, the ghastly, fake, macho high school locker dialog is more insulting than the silly Spartan costumes or the parade of implausible monsters the Spartans fight.
So, fun if you can ignore pretty much every factor that usually makes a movie more interesting than a hack 'n slash video game. Other than that, try "Gladiator" or, if you're desperate, "Troy" for your ancient warfare fix.