300 – 4 stars

this movie hardly needs or deserves reviewing. my roommate and i saw it separately, and had very similar reactions afterward — mainly that you get almost exactly what you were expecting, and exactly what all their marketing promised.

at no point in any advertising i’ve seen did they attempt to make this out as an epic story, only an epic battle, and that’s precisely what this movie is. i guess i could say *spoiler warning*, but since it’s also based loosely on historic events (minus the monsters of course), this shouldn’t come entirely as a surprise: the plot, at it’s base, is: lots of people are coming to attack. for political reasons, only 300 guys go out to defend the city. they do a hell of a job for a couple days before going out in a blaze of glory, inspiring the full army to take up the fight right behind them. aside from a few traitors and cowards, that’s pretty much it.

but after watching it, i can’t say i had any problem with that. if you like violent battle scenes or bloody graphic novels, both of which i quite enjoy, then you’ll have a great time watching the two hours of slicing, stabbing, beating, beheading, impaling goodness that is 300. if, say, you need every movie to have a complex plot, major character development, or less than a few hundred gallons of blood spilled or splattered, than you won’t be surprised either to find that 300 is not for you.

far from a condemnation, i actually believe that’s where this movie succeeded best: it made no claims it didn’t deliver, never tried to trick anyone into seeing it by pretending to be what it wasn’t, and for those who wanted what it had to offer, the film served it up beautifully and unabashedly. bravo, 300. bravo.