Very good for what it is, a comic book fantasy based on real events.

Rating: 7/10 (6 April 2007)

Zack Snyder's adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel 300 turned out to be an unexpected box office hit and was swarmed in controversy from the time it hit theatres. Obvious comparisons can be drawn to Robert Rodriguez's Sin City, also an adaptation of a Frank Miller comic book. Actors were shot in front of a blue screen for sixty days and backgrounds were CGI'ed in during a year of post-production to create a very dark and brooding atmosphere. Male characters are overly muscled in the comic book tradition and what few female characters there are are beautifully curved and scantily clad. Tough hard-boiled characters live and die by a dark philosophical code in the face of unspeakable evil.
The plot line of 300 is taken from the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC where 300 Spartan soldiers and an additional number of some thousands of other Greeks (glossed over in this movie) led by Spartan King Leonidas held off an exponentially larger army of the Persian Empire led by Emporer Xerxes for several days before finally being surrounded leaving the 300 Spartans dead to the last man. The battle galvanized the Greeks into uniting as one nation and they ultimately repelled the Persians.
The first twenty minutes or so detail the tough and disciplined upbringing made to mold Spartan boys into warriors which recalls Ridley Scott's Gladiator. Leonidas (Gerard Butler of Phantom of the Opera) is informed that Emporer Xerxes wants him to surrender without a fight by a Persian messenger. The messenger insults Leonidas's wife and is thrown into a bottomless pit. Leonidas consults an oracle who tells him Greece will be conquered or a Spartan king will die. There is nothing left to do, of course, but assemble 300 of the best Spartan warriors and fight to the death.
The action gets underway pretty quickly after that and the carnage begins. The Spartans fight in helmets, brown Speedos, cavalry boots, red capes and nothing else. The Persian army looks very much like the human mercenaries who fought on the side of Sauren's army in Peter Jackson's The Return of the King. One of the Spartans is actually David Wenham who played Faramir in the Rings movies. Blood spatters, heads are chopped off, bodies get stacked up, limbs fly, and Leonidas gives Braveheartesque speeches about honor and glory and freedom in a Scottish accent. More and more fantastic elements are introduced as the battle wears on--giant rhinos and elephants, huge trolls chained until they are released to destroy, hand grenades(?), and one particularly nasty fellow with meat cleavers for arms. Xerxes (played by Rodrigo Santoro of Lost) is around eight feet tall, wears eye shadow and mascara, is laced with chains and body jewelry, and little else, and speaks in what must have been an electronically altered voice that is both effeminate and baritone at the same time.
If the viewer is looking for historical accuracy this isn't it. Several of the speaking parts for Persians are played by Blacks, although Persia was what is now Iran and the Persian Empire never extended into Africa. Leonidas calls the Athenians "Philosophers and boy-lovers" but what really stopped the Persian advance was a sea battle fought by Athenians that sank most of the Persian navy. Quite often the 300 seems to be number around 50 in this movie, and the Persian army probably numbered around 300,000, not 2,000,000 as depicted here. The movie has been criticized by the latte liberal crowd as racist and homophobic; as well as celebrated by what is left of enthusiastic supporters of President Bush as a metaphor for the War on Terror: a few devoted REAL MEN defending white civilization against the barbaric brown-skinned horde while liberal surrender monkeys stab them in the back at home . Parallels could actually be drawn to Al Qaeda terrorists as well, with 300 depicting men raised since birth to take their own lives in a struggle against an evil foreign empire of infidels.
Presumably Frank Miller had none of these geo-political concerns on his mind when he put pen to paper and wrote an 88-page comic book about the Battle of Thermopylae. And Zack Snyder probably didn't either when he decided to put it on the big screen. The big screen is the place to really enjoy what is essentially a good rip-snorting action-filled popcorn flick in the tradition of Roland Emmerich's Independence Day. Don't think too much when watching this movie. Sit back, get comfortable, and just go with it.