In a way, 300 was both a huge surprise and something of a let down at the same time- thus it averages out to be two stars.
I thought this movie was seriously cool because of the way it was made, its calling card. It felt like an exciting comic book come to life. The intense artistry and unique special effects made the legend and the story of the battle simply awesome (both beautiful and gruesome).
I'd say 300 obviously appealed to my demographic (young male); we've got action and fighting not just in the third act, but all over the place. Gerard Butler is a badass killa with a bad attitude. Not to mention the fact that there were a couple steamy love scenes that were equally comicbook-icized. All the Spartans were glorified to the max and, since I'm a young male I can't help but say that it was a lot of fun watching them kill thousands of Persians. (Wow, that is messed up to say, isn't it?)
But my main complaint about this movie is the predictability of and lack of interest with the stock secondary characters and their flat/action-blockbuster dialogue. Everybody else in the movie other than our protagonist Leonidas was plain old, run-of-the mill boring. Okay, perhaps it was intentional to make all secondary characters as common as possible as a way to emphasize the legendary feel of the story. Maybe they wanted to make it feel like we've heard this tale before, because it has been told time and time again for centuries.
I'll concede the fact that Leonidas' dialogue was allowed to be bellowing and short-winded and angry. Sure, he had to talk like Charlton Heston to pull off the role ("Tonight, we dine in Hell" and "This is Sparta!" etc etc). But why did everyone else have to? The only other even remotely interesting character in the movie was the story teller with one eye (a tip of the hat to Homer perhaps?) because he spoke in sentences longer than four words.
So then. If you're a young male and don't care about how the characters talk or develop, and you're only interested in some blow-your-mind action sequences, then definitely see this movie. If you're a graphic artist or appreciate some great work on the computer, you'd also like 300. If you're a historian, I'm not so sure what you'd think.
