The truth about 300 - 300 Reviews

I think it's time that somebody is fair about how good this movie really is. As a movie, as pure fiction, this film is good. It's designed to be a tragic, heroic film with an obvious black vs. white plot. It is cinematically beautiful, full of excellent action sequences, has a fantastic score, and is simple to understand. Where the movie suffers is in character development, historical inaccuracy, and relatability to the common man. It is my firm belief that before you can have a true heroic story the characters in the story need to be relatable. What makes this difficult to acheive in 300 is the obvious elitist nature of the Spartans combined with the standoffishness of their leader and the lack of character development of said people. There are few moments where you feel the Spartans are human. I feel that any movie should be given a certain degree of license with historical accuracy. Movies are meant to be entertaining, and sometimes real life just isn't. But I think this movie may have taken too many liberties with history, and in the end it suffers for it. There is nothing wrong with patriotism, idealism, or any other kind of ism that you should so choose to subscribe to. And this movie certainly alluded to Spartan patriotism many times. However, it did little to endear the ideal of Sparta to the viewer, and by doing so it made the Spartan sacrifice seem unnecessary and vain. Any relation that can be felt to Sparta comes only from one's knowledge of history and personal feeling towards the historical sacrifice that the Greeks made at Therompylae. So the storyline's only option was to redeem them by demonizing of their enemy, which, if one knows anything about ancient Persia, is an injustice. I'm not one for nitpicking about a movie if there are some inaccuracies, as you must take any truth that somebody chooses to tell you with a grain of salt, but this movie completely ignores the entire culture of Persia and their rich tradition in order to set up a straw man for their "heroes" to knock down. If it had been a person alive today, everybody who had a hand in making this movie would currently be in court for slander. As a movie, this movie is entertaining enough, the problem is that once somebody looks past the cinematography and outstanding action sequences they find that the story is hollow and lacking, and that the actual historical event itself is far more compelling and meaningful. Giving it an average movie rating is doing it perhaps more justice than it deserves, but it is entertaining only on the basis of the strength of the people who were in it, and the effort of the people who edited it and scored it. Lastly, I'm going to be honest. I'm not a big Frank Miller fan. I find his work to be filled with what is grotesque and disturbing, and that in abundence. I understand the desire to make monsters for a hero to kill as it gives a sense of danger and accomplishment, but he takes it to another level and twists everything until the last drop of humanity and decency has been wrung out. And for that reason I will no longer be watching any of the movies he is involved in.