Well I've finally watched it and it was utterly brilliant! I think most of the comments here against it have missed the point by quite some considerable margin.
I should qualify my post by stating that I am a long term comics fan. Some of you seem to imply that you didn't even know it was a comic. Then you are not well informed or well read and your fragile sensibilities are not prepared for the mental assault a good comic can provide, even over cinema in some cases.
And again with the
I am fully subscribed to the visual power Frank Miller's graphic novels have and I wanted to see it on screen. I got that. That's a plus point right there. Over stylised violence and lashings of blood is what I was expecting. Good job well done.
You also complain about cliches? This story is so old it earned the right to be a cliche a long time ago! It wouldn't have done it justice to do it half-cocked. And anyway, how the heck can you do a story about a society founded on and built for warfare, and then try and be subtle? The story of this battle is probably the source for those basic, overplayed themes of honour, insurmountable odds, family far away, etc, that we've come to know so well. So they can get away with it because it's near enough true. I'd have actually been disappointed if some of the cheesiness wasn't there. Somehow it underlines the overall theme and enriches it. The whole story sounds so absurd that pulling back on the acting and dialogue would have been self defeating.
300 is supposed to be a collection of simple and brutal metaphors. Yes, all the traitors are ugly, but this is clever when driving home the idea of Sparta, a society that murders its own children if they are weak in any way.
In the end, you can junk all this waffle. The fact is, this brilliant film is perfect as a wind down movie any time. You know what you're going to get and you get plenty of it!
