Trash in every way

Rating: 1/10 (6 September 2009)

Unexciting action, terrible direction, and tedious pomposity, all wrapped up in a confused mess of mangled history, Star Wars, and Lord of the Rings.
First big scene: Young Leonidas gets sent out to the mountains to prove himself. A heavy snow is falling (remember, this is southern Greece) on this lad dressed only in a loin-cloth. A wolf shows up. Horrors! Except it isn't a wolf, but rather some kind of mythical caricature with a weirdly shaped body, ridiculous teeth, and of course drool cascading from its mouth. Leonidas dispatches the beast with his lance.
Next big scene: A Persian emissary shows up to try to talk Sparta into surrendering to Xerxes. Leonidas and the Spartans push the emissary into monstrous vertical pit right in the center of town. Despite being in the very middle of town, it had no guard wall to keep people from toppling into it. Yeah, that's realistic. Is there a Balrog down there?
Next big scene: Leonidas scales a nearly vertical mountain in sandals to consult the oracle, who is tended by a bunch of deformed old men that apparently are Siths, for they look like The Emperor in Star Wars VI. The oracle is a hot chic in diaphanous garments that might as well not be there. That is the first gratuitous nudity scene, obligatory in movies nowadays but usually better done than this pointless display. The oracle tells Leonidas not to go to war.
Next big scene: Leonidas is in bed with his gorgeous wife, Gorgo, discussing whether to go to war. We get a totally gratuitous exhibition of Gorgo's breasts, followed by a semi-pornographic depiction of her and Leonidas making love. Totally pointless, adding nothing to the plot.
At this point, it starts to run together in my mind, but eventually we get to the battle scenes, which are grotesquely overdone. Every Greek is able to dispatch one after another after another of the incompetent Persian soldiers with a quick spear thrust or a sword slash. Every thrust and slash is accompanied by huge spurts of blood. Frequently the action is suddenly changed from normal photography to irritating and counter-effective stop-motion. The director apparently is in love with that technique, for he uses it over and over. Its main effect is annoyance. Oh, I forgot to mention that all the Spartans are dressed in breechclouts. Shows off the muscles but doesn't do a lot to protect against enemy blows.
The human combat scenes are bad enough, but then we get some Lord of the Rings stuff, transforming the battle scenes from merely insipid to downright idiotic. First, there is the Cave Troll. He is some giant creature who looks sort of like an overgrown human but with a mouth full of teeth and unable to speak any language. The Persians bring him up to the battle in chains and then turn him loose on the Spartans. Some Spartan does him in with an arrow or lance to the eye. Mines of Moria, anyone? Later, the Persians bring up a troop of Oliphants, er, elephants, which turn out to be ineffective in combat because they merely fall off the cliff at the edge of the trail. After that, the Persians bring up a gigantic rhinoceros, all fitted out with armor. This beast is bigger than any two real rhinos. It comes charging at the Spartans. Some cool Spartan casually does it in by throwing a lance at it. The lance hits the beast, the beast keeps coming, the cool Spartan just stands there, and then the beast expires, sliding forward and coming to rest at the very feet of the cool Spartan. How gripping! How dramatic! How stupid can you get?
The Spartans are undone by a creature who is supposed to be a deformed Spartan but who looks like a cross between an Orc, Gollum, and the Hunchback of Notre Dame. This creature shows the Persians a trail around to the Spartans' rear.
Back in Sparta, Leonidas's wife, Queen Gorgo, is trying to persuade the Spartan ruling council to send an army to help Leonidas. (The complete mangling of history necessary to permit this particular plot twist is not worth going into here.) She needs to persuade a Spartan politician to back her, but he is a bad guy who wants her bod. She lets him have it as a quid pro quo. However, the next day he betrays her in the council, not backing her plea and calling her a whore. She grabs the sword of one of the guards and does in the bad guy, delivering a short speech to him while sticking him with the sword. While she is delivering her little speech, and the bad guy is writhing in agony, all the guards in the immediate vicinity are just standing around, doing nothing to try to stop any of this. Really believable, right?
Back to Thermopylae. The Greeks get killed in an overdone scene.
Now to the fields of Plataea, a year later, where a Greek army is about to take on the Persian army. A Greek delivers a supposedly inspiring speech about how they are going to defeat the Persians and so save the world from mysticism and tyranny, as if the Spartans' worship of Zeus and all the rest wasn't mysticism and as if Sparta, with most of its population comprising unfree helots that the Spartan citizens could murder at will once a year during Krypteia, was a paragon of civility.
At this point, mercifully, the movie ends. Garbage, from beginning to end.