CNET Networks Entertainment GameSpot | GameFAQs | SportsGamer | Metacritic | MP3.com | TV.com
Home | About Metacritic | About Metascores | What's New | Wireless Versions | Discussion Forums | Advertising Inquiries | Contact Us | RSS
Metacritic.com: We Deal With Criticism
     Help
> Switch to Advanced Search  
Film Video/DVD Music Games TV

Film

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

 

Wide Releases

sort by name sort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 

Limited Releases

sort by name sort by score

85 Alexandra
40 America the Beautiful
66 American Teen
74 Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer
65 August Evening
xx Bachna Ae Haseeno
62 Baghead
58 Beautiful Losers
xx Beer for My Horses
47 Before the Rains
80 Bigger, Stronger, Faster*
56 Bottle Shock
75 Boy A
55 Bra Boys
61 Brick Lane
64 Brideshead Revisited
47 Burn After Reading
61 Bustin' Down the Door
49 Children of Huang Shi, The
54 CSNY: Déjà Vu
xx Cthulhu
86 Edge of Heaven, The
66 Elegy
52 Elsa & Fred
80 Encounters at the End of the World
26 Everybody Wants to Be Italian
64 Fall, The
86 Flight of the Red Balloon, The
82 Frozen River
71 Girl Cut in Two, A
62 Girls Rock!
xx Goal II: Living the Dream
73 Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
54 Hamlet 2
25 Hell Ride
44 Henry Poole is Here
76 I Served the King of England
72 I.O.U.S. A
63 In Search of a Midnight Kiss
46 Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer
67 Jellyfish
62 Kabluey
63 Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
78 Last Mistress, The
50 Last Stop for Paul
70 Love Songs
61 Man Named Pearl, A
89 Man on Wire
62 Mister Foe
85 Momma's Man
74 Mongol
46 My Mexican Shivah
80 Order of Myths, The
66 Patti Smith: Dream of Life
54 Ping Pong Playa
77 Pool, The
72 Priceless
61 Red
71 Roman de gare
78 Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired
51 Savage Grace
55 Save Me
73 Secret, A
57 Sixty Six
58 Sukiyaki Western Django
xx Surfer, Dude
83 Tell No One
56 Then She Found Me
71 To the Limit
72 Transsiberian
81 Trouble the Water
83 U2 3D
86 Up the Yangtze
79 Visitor, The
61 Wackness, The
54 What We Do Is Secret
66 When Did You Last See Your Father?
67 XXY
54 Year of the Fish
xx Young People F**king
75 Young@Heart

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 



Printer-Friendly Version Email This Page Discuss In Our Forums

300
Warner Bros. Pictures

300 reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 51 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
6.9 out of 10
based on 35 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 785 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: R for graphic battle sequences throughout, some sexuality and nudity

Starring Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, Dominic West, David Wenham, Vincent Regan, Michael Fassbender, Tom Wisdom, and Andrew Pleavin

Based on the epic graphic novel by Frank Miller, 300 is a ferocious retelling of the ancient Battle of Thermopylae in which King Leonidas (Butler) and 300 Spartans fought to the death against Xerxes and his massive Persian army. Facing insurmountable odds, their valor and sacrifice inspire all of Greece to unite against their Persian enemy, drawing a line in the sand for democracy. (Warner Bros.)


GENRE(S): Action  |  Adventure  |  Drama  |  War  
WRITTEN BY: Zack Snyder
Kurt Johnstad
Michael Gordon
Frank Miller and Lynn Varley (graphic novel)
 
DIRECTED BY: Zack Snyder  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: July 31, 2007 
Theatrical: March 9, 2007 
RUNNING TIME: 116 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: USA 

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

83
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Gianni Truzzi
Director Zack Snyder uses his computers to create ferocious and painterly images, with as much attention to each frame as a hand-drawn panel.
Read Full Review
80
Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar
300 is a feast for the senses (well, two of them anyway) and an impressive technical achievement. More than that, it's a hell of a lot of fun.
Read Full Review
78
Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
Not since Mario Bava's "Hercules in the Haunted World" has Greco-Roman movie-house mythmaking been so thoroughly well-conceived and executed.
Read Full Review
75
Rolling Stone Peter Travers
300 is a movie blood-drunk on its own artful excess. Guys of all ages and sexes won't be able to resist it.
Read Full Review
75
Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Look, but don't be touched: There is much to see but little to remember in this telling of a battle we are meant never to forget.
Read Full Review
75
ReelViews James Berardinelli
300 may not offer masterful storytelling in a conventional sense, but it's hard to beat as a spectacle and that makes it worthwhile viewing for all but the most squeamish of potential audience members.
Read Full Review
75
Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
300 is a huge step forward in visually sophisticated storytelling.
Read Full Review
75
New York Daily News Jack Mathews
It's impossible not to be moved by its nearly nonstop visual assault.
Read Full Review
75
Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach
Cinema has once again proven its ability to incorporate every other mass-media art form. Director Zack Snyder and his computer wizards have made the best example yet of the movie-as-comic-book.
Read Full Review
75
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Significantly, this hyper-stylization of 300 is limited to its visuals. The performances are played straight, and this combination -- straight performances and stylized visuals -- produces an uncanny effect.
Read Full Review
75
TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
It may not be by-the-book history -- a relative term in any event, when discussing the ancients whose worldview embraced men, gods and monsters -- but what a spectacle!
Read Full Review
70
The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
In epic battle scenes where he combines breathtaking and fluid choreography, gorgeous 3-D drawings and hundreds of visual effects, director Zack Snyder puts onscreen the seemingly impossible heroism and gore of which Homer sang in "The Iliad."
Read Full Review
67
Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
The movie swings back and forth from awesome to awful so regularly and rapidly that it's like a jai alai match.
Read Full Review
63
Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
300 is at its best when it settles for purely visceral thrills, such as Leonidas' battle against a hulking warrior twice the size of a normal man. The movie's broad strokes are all superlative: It's the details that keep 300 from being anything more than a striking curiosity.
Read Full Review
63
USA Today Claudia Puig
The action epic 300 is so overblown, overheated and over the top that on some level, it's fun to get caught up in the operatic dizziness of it.
Read Full Review
63
Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
This is a mixed blessing. For a story replete with open-air combat 300 is strangely claustrophobic. And for a film with lotsa flesh and even more blood, it's light on flesh-and-blood characters.
Read Full Review
60
Variety Todd McCarthy
A blustery, bombastic, visually arresting account of the Battle of Thermopylae as channeled through the rabid imagination of graphic novelist Frank Miller.
Read Full Review
60
Empire Will Lawrence
Visually stunning, thoroughly belligerent and as shallow as a pygmy’s paddling pool, this is a whole heap of style tinged with just a smidgen of substance.
Read Full Review
50
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
My deepest objection to the movie is that it is so blood-soaked. When dialogue arrives to interrupt the carnage, it's like the seventh-inning stretch.
Read Full Review
50
The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson
Part of the fascination of the Thermopylae story is that it really happened, and it helped define real heroism. There's nothing remotely like reality to be had in this film.
Read Full Review
50
Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
The disconnect between the human actors and the digital backgrounds is more pronounced here than in a futuristic adventure like "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow," and because classic Hollywood cinema is so rich with epic images of antiquity, this can't help but seem chintzy.
Read Full Review
50
New York Post Kyle Smith
Sensory gluttony is reason enough to see a movie, and few epics overstuff the eyes like this one.
Read Full Review
50
Premiere Glenn Kenny
That it's so flat as an action movie probably has a lot to do with why people might prefer to jawbone over its putatively controversial aspects--there's really not much of a “wow” factor to revel in.
Read Full Review
50
Boston Globe Wesley Morris
There's a stale, synthetic airlessness about the movie. Imagine a large cast trapped in a series of spectacular screensavers. It could be ancient Greece. It could be somebody's hard drive.
Read Full Review
50
Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
300 is "Gladiator" for the gamer set.
Read Full Review
50
Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
Just about everything in this pea-brained epic is overscaled and overwrought – it's a cartoon trying to be a towering triptych.
Read Full Review
50
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
300 is something to see, but unless you love violence as much as a Spartan, Quentin Tarantino or a video-game-playing teenage boy, you will not be endlessly fascinated.
Read Full Review
40
Slate Dana Stevens
300 will be talked about as a technical achievement, the next blip on the increasingly blurry line between movies and video games.
Read Full Review
40
Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
The bigger question to ask about 300 is why, for a supposedly rousing tale of heroism, it's so curiously unaffecting.
Read Full Review
38
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
As you watch -- no, endure -- this flattened-out spectacle, there's really nothing worth pondering save for a single thought: What a difference a director makes.
Read Full Review
30
The New Yorker David Denby
Pop has always drawn energy from the lower floors of respectability; this movie, in which fan-boy cultism reaches new levels of goofy chaos and sexual confusion, draws energy from the subbasement.
Read Full Review
30
The New York Times A.O. Scott
Another movie -- Matt Stone and Trey Parker's "Team America," whose wooden puppets were more compelling actors than most of the cast of 300 -- calculated the cost [of freedom] at $1.05. I would happily pay a nickel less, in quarters or arcade tokens, for a vigorous 10-minute session with the video game that 300 aspires to become.
Read Full Review
30
Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
300 presents a dual clash of civilizations. An action adventure that pits thousands of Persians against 300 brave Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae, it also pits millions of fans of brainless violence against a gallant band, or so I choose to think of us, who still expect movies to contain detectable traces of humanity.
30
Washington Post Stephen Hunter
It's kind of a ghastly hoot, and while I suppose it does no harm, it also contributes nothing. It's a guilty unpleasantness.
Read Full Review
20
Village Voice Nathan Lee
It's a ponderous, plodding, visually dull picture, but the blame shouldn't be put on Snyder's skills per se, and has nothing to do with his ambition to blur the distinction between CGI and photography. Frankly, it's the slavish, frame-by-frame devotion to Miller's source material that's the problem.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 6.9 (out of 10) based on 785 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Al Q gave it a4:
I would buy the DVD if it featured a version without dialogue, which was uniformly dopey. In fact, the whole script looked like it was written by a team of 8th-graders on a glue bender. Anyone who didn't want to kill the narrator 15 minutes into the film wasn't paying attention.

Trent K. gave it a9:
Love the style, subject matter and acting in this movie. This is totally original filmmaking. Something like I've never seen before. I like how faithful it was to the graphic novel.

Kass B gave it a0:
Oily men in loin cloths rubbing each other down and kicking each other into pools of Vaseline while wearing gold necklaces and tongue rings that hang from their eyebrows? I'm gay and even this is too gay for me.

Fábio H. gave it a3:
This movie is way too overrated. Everyone just talked so much about it that I had to watch it myself, and I found it disappointing. All I could see was some few scenes of nudity and endless nonsense violence. People fighting, hacking, slashing, piercing, and that's all I can remember whenever I think of this movie. It doesn't have a notable plot, just endless nonsense fighting. I don't know about you, but that's just not enough to make me enjoy a movie. The costumes and the graphical area were great, but that's all. I even found it funny that all of the Persians had to be pierced, deformed or ugly freaks in some way while the Spartans were all strong men with sculpted bodies and high morals. That's just disrespectful to Persian people. Spartan women are shown as beautiful, moral and full of rights, while the only Persian women that appear in the movie are nude dancers. Actually, it should be taken into consideration that Persian women had a lot more political/social/economical rights than Spartan women, but despite of that, in the beginning of the movie, they make it sound like the Persian women were mistreated and the Spartan women had many more freedoms. Oh, and of course, let's all remember that the film is REALLY distant from the historical facts. It wasn't just 300 men fighting there, and the Persian army wasn't made of "millions", no ancient army could be so big. Sparta was nothing like freedom or democracy, despite of whatever this movie shows. I think it is just another propaganda tool to denigrate Iranians and the eastern people, and show the west as the moral, "good", and democratic system, that has to fight the "evil", tyrannic and immoral eastern forces.

Phil M. gave it a10:
I can't begin to understand why anyone wouldn't like this movie. The message of the movie is to not take crap from anyone. And it seems the people who hate this movie have a sexual fantasy with the government bossing them around.

Chris gave it a2:
The only way to enjoy this movie is if you are in a fit of 'roid rage...however, even then it may be difficult to sit through this entire film, given how sore your ass will be from the injection.

Matt A. gave it a6:
Saw this for the first time the other day and it was okay but Watchmen is going to kick this movie's ass.

Read more user comments...

Discuss this movie in our forums

Return to top of page
Home | FILM | DVD/VIDEO | MUSIC | GAMES | TV | Forums | About Metacritic metacritic.com

Popular on CBS sites: Fantasy Football | Miley Cyrus | MLB | iPhone 3G | GPS | Recipes | Shwayze | NFL

About CNET Networks | Jobs | Advertise

© 2008 CNET Networks, Inc., a CBS Company. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use