Fairly entertaining at best, but very flawed and hilariously over the top.

Rating: 5/10 (8 June 2014)

So here we have 300, the story of the spartans who held the pass of something or other, male machismo blah, defending Sparta, more blah. Point is, if you've come for story, you should look elsewhere. 300 relies on one thing and one thing only, the brutal (and in some cases, entertaining) action sequences. However, even that is clogged down with slow-mo effects, which quickly become repetitive. Seeing Gerard Butler swinging his sword in an arc in slow motion loses its novelty pretty quickly.
If those were the only problems, I might be giving the film a 7, even an 8. However, there are some aspects of 300 that are flat out silly. To name but a few, Xerxes is given the voice of the anonymous witness protection program, there is a fat thing with swords for hands, and some kind of weird goat-man-thing at another point. You just can't take the film seriously, something that the film clearly wants you to do.
What really annoys me is that some people have actually ranked this alongside the far superior Gladiator (in some ways, doesn't surprise me- 300 does rip off a fair bit from the better film). I was going to give it a 6, but then I remembered that fade-to-black moment with the Mr T character near the beginning of the film. It's moments like this that drag 300 down. Anyone who rates this above 7 is apparently a fan of mindless, generic action sequences that are all style and no substance.