300 (2007)

So that. Was. Sparta. Call me cynical, but I always pictured something a little less... digital. Make no mistake, whatever else the film may be, it sure looks good! The acting, meanwhile, is generally passable but more from the Michael Bay school of performance than, say, Shakespeare. Queen Gorgo probably comes out best, whilst the one-note King Leonidas injects some testosterone, dials his voice up to 11 and has at it. At the same time the script he shouts doesn't bother giving these fellows much reason to fight other than being generally indignant, so basically the whole film is an exercise in angry bloodbaths with a criminally dull side of toga politics. I guess it comes down to what you want out of your movies. If your idea of a good time is watching a few thousand things die in gruesome detail, while a king paradoxically screams about freedom and reason in front and inside of sublime visual canvases then this movie is everything you could possibly hope for and then some. But if you care why these people fight, or what these people fight for, or just want to see a toga debate given the same loving detail as a battle scene then your mileage may vary.

7 out of 10.