It could have been better

Rating: 5/10 (9 March 2007)

The heart of this movie is in the Spartan battle sequences. The acting was terrible, I felt no passion from any of the performances during their "moments", and I was especially bored when they'd "take a breath" from the great Spartan battle. The script of dialogue was OK at best containing mostly one-liners & unambitious speeches delivered by semi-decent actors, and the narration got pretty annoying in parts. However, I reserve most of this blame not for the actors, but for the director & screenwriter Zack Snyder who obviously has no clue on how to direct actors or write an excellent adaptation with good dialogue instead of yelling one-liners after screaming Spartans!
Now for the little bit of praise I have reserved for this film. All of the above aside, the battle sequences were fantastic. The stop motion is a little dizzying, but effective in enhancing the brutality of the battle. There were some scenes that were very tense & showed much promise from this production team. The cinematography in the film was way above average & the CGI special effects were used in an appropriate & awe-inspiring manner. The problem with the visual effects & the cinematography/CGI being way above par, in my opinion, exaggerated the lack of great performances from everyone with the exception of Gerard Butler, who played the role of Leonidas fabulously, but given the bad dialogue this also seemed upsetting.
I was very excited to see this film due to IMDb's glorious upheaval, but I'm sorry folks, but this one has definitely been highly overrated by fans & only slightly underrated by critics. This film could have been much better if the performances & the script/direction was a lot more focused instead of all the focus on the visual effects & the battle sequence, for essentially that's all this film is. The heart of it all.