Honestly, it is over-hyped and mediocre at best - 300 Reviews

Zack Snyder?s '300' begins with thunder, blood-red lettering, and then cuts to a pile of skulls. That should give you a pretty good idea of what?s to come: battles, decapitation, grotesque subhuman creatures and raging rhinos. Historical scholars might suffer fainting spells at just how inaccurate this movie depiction is of the Battle of Thermopylae. The film is based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller, 'Sin City' maestro of the thrillingly perverse, which took its inspiration from the story of the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. In this doomed fight, 300 Spartans took on an army of more than 100,000 Persians. Ultimately, their brave charge inspired the rest of Greece to band together. That?s the setup, and it?s a good theme, albeit a risky one following the mixed box office results of 'Alexander' and 'Troy.' The time period might be roughly the same, but the films seem to have been made on different planets. Snyder, whose first film, a remake of 'Dawn of the Dead,' was another visual stunner, doesn?t have much of a cast here, or much of a script. He doesn?t need it, since the entire film was shot against a green screen, allowing for backgrounds that are wonderfully, ludicrously phony. That?s '300' in a nutshell ? almost nothing is real. Memorable sights abound: Thousands of arrows soaring in an arc through the air, Persians plummeting off a cliff, the fantastically displayed visual of dead villagers festooned to a giant tree. The requirements for the Spartan soldiers seem to be six-pack abs, facial hair, a tolerance for appearing unwashed for weeks upon end, and the ability to sleep on your shield, neck cramps be damned. Star Gerard Butler fulfills all of these requirements as King Leonidas, a warrior who was trained since birth to vanquish all comers. He?s a man who will literally kill the messenger, shoving an unlucky Persian into the darkest, most unsafe well in history, then outwit the creepy Greek elders, and conclude the day with a bout of vigorous lovemaking. Dominic West of 'The Wire' appears as a sleazy politico, and David Wenham?s narrator is the cast?s most interesting male (although the audience grows tired of the incessant narration), but Lena Headey makes the strongest impression as the Spartan Queen. It?s too bad that '300' is so utterly humorless, that the voice of the villainous Xerxes sounds dubbed from a 1970s kung-fu flick, and that so much time is spent on a hideous, Gollum-on-steroids wannabe Spartan. However, I'm willing to wager that '300?s' target audience could care less about these things, from the trivial to the outrageous. They want carnage and testosterone oozing from the screen, and they?ll get it. The movie has some of the best special effects I have ever seen. And perhaps that is worth the price of admission alone. I'm also willing to bet that this movie breaks the March record for box office receipts - it seems every showing is practically sold out. But overall, this movie does not live up to its tremendous hype and is far inferior to 'Sin City.'