First review of "300"

[Matrix XII]

THIS MOVIE WAS GLRORIOUS!

I'm going to see it again this weekend :D

[Razorwing]

just saw this in the UK, special previews or something both the screens were fully booked. Wow, what an awesome movie!

Still wondering where

he got that apple from, and why the quasimodo guy wanted a wizard hat, but yeh lol.

Also, who threw the spear at the beginning into that front dudes chest?

And, am i right in thinking that at the end, he threw the spear at Xerxes but missed on purpose to show he isnt a god? and that he bleeds, or was it just unlucky that he missed?

either way

a really great film, shame how it ended, although i did kinda expect that to happen, shame they didnt show the huge battle at the end.

Also, gotta love the killing of people with the shield =D.

Will definitley get this on DVD.

well from the comic, Leonidis threw the spear, wanting to kill Xerxes, but missed.

[NoneAvail]

Lol sick movie. I loved the battle scenes. I liked the sex scene hahahaha.

it was nice, but how the hell did they kill those elephants? definitively buying the 2dvd set when it comes out.

[Razorwing]

Lol sick movie. I loved the battle scenes. I liked the sex scene hahahaha.

it was nice, but how the hell did they kill those elephants? definitively buying the 2dvd set when it comes out.

they threw their spears.. lol.

[kaffra]

im hoping for a special directors cut or something to come out

[MGS4-SS]

Lol sick movie. I loved the battle scenes. I liked the sex scene hahahaha.

it was nice, but how the hell did they kill those elephants? definitively buying the 2dvd set when it comes out.

Pushed them off the cliff, like every other enemy they fought with.

Ran out of spears? Push them.

[ATLien_0]

Freakin awsome movie. If you know frank millers style then you probably would have expected in from the beginning that it would be gorry, lots of slow-mo, and tons of action. I love his style. He took an amazing piece of history and comic and made it into an awsome movie.

Too bad it came at the beginning of movie season as far as awards for next year

[Meshuggah]

9.5/10....ive seen it twice in the theaters...waiting to see if it will make an IMAX near me.

[azcodemonkey]

but how the hell did they kill those elephants?

The narrator said that the ground was slick with the blood of the combatants, and caused the animals to lose footing, which gave the Spartans a chance to force them over the cliff.

[MrKuro]

I quite enjoyed 300, saw it in the Imax yesterday. not one of the best of all time, but probably one of the top 10 in 2007, its one of those "must see in a theatre setting" movies, watching it any other way would lose alot of the appeal.

[kyro]

yup...finally saw it yesterday at IMAX here in bombay.. due to IMAX the movie was enjoyable but yea... the gruesomeness went over the edge so to speak and kind of made it dulled... but its ok if you want to have fun with movie its enjoyable,.. I dont know was the sex scene edited out specially for showing here.. but i felt it was very short...still enjoyed :D

[[DGS]]

DavisDVD.com already announced the deleted scenes that will be included in the DVD !

[obsolete_power]

This movie is off the hook!!! Amazing!!!

[Jase]

This is madness!..Madness? This is Sparta!

great Movie!!!

Edited March 19, 2007 by Jase

[jamend]

I liked it (and I thought it was better than Sin City). Best ancient war movie since Spartacus :p

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

It was a visually appealing movie with lots of fighting action. One thing I didn't like about it was the nudity and the gore. I'm not talking about the "stab you in the stomach" gore, I'm talking about full on beheading. Complete with the head flying off and the body collapsing. I still think more than half the movie was exaggerated. Especially the scene where Leonidas ducks slightly to dodge the axe thrown by the uber Immortal warrior. Yes, the one that took a sword out of its bicep. Yep, the same one that took a dagger out of its eye. Other than what I mentioned, I thought the movie was great.

For glory, for honour... I give this movie a rating of:

:star: :star: :star: :star:

4/5 stars

[Michael Lacey]

One sick, twisted, and epic movie.

Couldn't have asked for anything better.

[Crazysah]

I just went and saw it today and it was awesome! What a brilliant movie!

[Spielo]

I just got back from seeing this at the BFI Imax, apparently the largest cinema screen in the UK. I don't know what the hell you people are talking about. The film is complete and utter ****. I really enjoyed it though, it was utterly hilarious.

300 is, without doubt, the gayest film I've ever seen. Let's be clear on this: I never, ever use the word "gay" to mean "bad", I think people that do are the biggest ****ing morons in the world. I don't mean any single word I say as a slight against homosexuals and I have no prejudice agains gays. I'm merely describing the film in the way that I saw it.

300 is the gayest film I've ever seen. I haven't seen Brokeback Mountain, but I'd put money on 300 being more gay. The film follows a large group of greased-up beefcake men who go to war because their king won't give someone a ######.

I'm not joking.

Basically, this guy called Xerxes wants the king of Sparta to give him a ######. He says that he will invade unless King Leonidas "kneels down before him". Leonidas refuses this, probably because Xerxes is a ridiculously camp, bling-encrusted ###### with a voice so stupid that it's a parody of itself. So, ###### refused, 300 greased-up beefcake guys go to battle in the most incredibly gay innuendo-laden film you'll ever see. The men contiunally talk about each other's "behinds", and "watching each other's backs" and being "right behind you".

In one of the only heterosexual scenes in the film, a woman gets ****ed in the ass. The symbolism throughout the film is genius though. The persians represent AIDS, and the film tells the story of the homosexuals' epic struggle against it.

The film itself is utterly terrible, devoid of any plot, apart from the ###### refusal I've already outlined.

The action sequences are all completely unoriginal, you will have seen all of them before. You know that bit in Hero where they fire all those arrows at once? That same thing is in 300, except the CGI people selected the arrows, pressed Ctrl+C, and then Ctrl+V several times. It's the exact same scene, only duplicated several times over.

You know the scene in Matrix Reloaded when Neo fights all those Agent Smiths? The same thing is in 300, except the CGI people selected the Agent Smiths, pressed Ctrl+C, and then Ctrl+V several times.

Every single action sequence has been done before in another film, they just took the existing sequence, and did it on a bigger scale.

Talking of bigger scales, seeing the film on the biggest cinema screen in the country added nothing to the film, since all the scenery comprises of glowing yellow blurs, and all the characters are just greased-up beefcakes.

The dialogue is diabolical, and the quality of the acting is laughable in places.

In fact, the only thing that made me enjoy the film was that the whole thing was laughable. As soon as you realise that virtually every line of dialogue is gay innuendo, the film is a riot of hilarity. I was crying with laughter in places.

[TheFlusher]

what a interesting critic. I've yet to see the movie...Probably this weekend then I'll come back to post my review.

[tonyh21]

Totally agree with you. It was nothing but a hollywood money maker. Everything is digital, even the blood...poor acting, absolutely no depth, and the direction was completely biased and discriminatory. Xerxes was one of the greatest leaders in human history.

I was most disappointed aesthetically. The movie failed to connect its loudly-proclaimed broad abstractions to its concretes, mostly notably in the case of the ideas of reason and freedom. Consider a few examples.

First, Leonidas was supposed to be uncompromising. He wasn't swayed by the appeals of Xerxes (and the deformed Ephialtes) to be reasonable by submitting to Persian rule. Yet he compromised from the very start, not just by submitting to the mystical demands of the Ephors, but then by circumventing their demands without directly challenging them. The fact that he did so begrudgingly, as a necessity of Spartan political life, shows him to be open to compromise in the name of necessity. So why not compromise with the Persians too? Just because, I guess.

Second, the Spartans were repeatedly said to be superb warriors, not just for their strength, courage and skills, but also for their use of reason. However, the training of the youth was not just purely physical, but also mostly the endurance of pains like freezing cold human brutality. Even worse, the training was positively irrational, e.g. the young men had to steal food to live, then would be brutally punished if caught. Unsurprisingly then, the Spartans showed basically no ingenuity in battle in the movie. They relied solely on their strength, skill, discipline, courage, and even indifference to life -- not on any clever tactics. In contrast, Herodotus recounts that the Spartans would often fake retreats, then turn back en masse to slaughter unwary Persians. It's significant that that bit of actual history was omitted from the movie, I think.

Third, Sparta was clearly portrayed in the movie as a fundamentally totalitarian society. (That's certainly accurate.) Yet those concrete facts were never reconciled with all the Spartan talk about the value of freedom. So really, what made life under Persian rule so much worse than life under Spartan rule? That totalitarianism was also grossly inconsistent with Sparta's supposed ideal of reason. Unsurprisingly, no rationale was ever offered for Sparta's overwhelmingly militaristic culture: it was just supposed to be obviously superior to a city in which the army is composed of reservist potters and sculptors.

Fourth, and perhaps most galling of all, the final heroism of the Spartans was portrayed as nothing short of senseless adherence to duty. The Spartans were forbidden from retreating in battle. They could only stay, fight, and die -- and that's what they did. To retreat was portrayed as obvious cowardice -- yet the movie Spartans had absolutely no rational reason to stand their ground. As recounted by Herodotus, the Spartans stayed for a very rational reason: the unprepared Greek city-states to the south desperately needed time to muster their forces. The Spartans fought at the pass after the betrayal to hold off the Persians for a bit longer. Unlike in the movie, where all were slaughtered immediately, the real Spartans achieved that purpose with their deaths.

These failures to connect the abstract ideals of the movie with its concretes was the reason why, I think, the dialogue of the movie often seemed like a disconnected series of stirring but empty one-liners. It was, to put it in terms of Leonard Peikoff's "DIM Hypothesis," very much M1. It aspired to be more than the writers could muster, I think.

That's not to say that I didn't like some of the elements of the movie. I very much enjoyed the characters of Leonidas and Gorgo. I decided not to focus on those better elements of the movie not just because I regard them as inessential, but also because I've already seen much praise for the movie, including from Objectivists.

Overall, I thought the movie a serious failure. That was disappointing.

Edited March 23, 2007 by tonyh21

[TheFlusher]

I'd have to say the movie was pretty good. The ending was fitting to the word "victory". I'd give it 3.5/5

[ZiGGA]

I didn't think it was anything special. I mean the approach of the film was quite good with the different way of filming it. But no way was this film an epic. It had it's moments but after so long I felt like the movie wasn't actually doing much and in the end I was quite glad it finished.

There were times in the movie when the acting was just plain boring, the things they were saying, it was as if they were giving it a modern approach with the dialog used. But I couldn't really get my head around it in all fairness, the whole deal with the CGI blood was a bit OTT, but some of the gore in the film was great and I don't mean that in a morbid way. But overall I'll give it a 6 out of 10. Could of been so much better in my opinion.

[Syphonic]

Probably one of the best films I've ever seen. Really appealed to me, but then I knew what to expect and love Miller's style. 9.9/10 (ending wasn't quite as good as it could have been)

[way2quik]

i found it to be brilliant.

a shame my friend fell asleep during the movie.

baka.