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300
Warner Bros. Pictures


6.9

based on 34 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 773 votes
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FILM:

Dawn of the Dead

GAMES:

300: March to Glory (PSP)

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

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

300 is a huge step forward in visually sophisticated storytelling.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

It's impossible not to be moved by its nearly nonstop visual assault.

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.

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.

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!

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

New York Post Kyle Smith

Sensory gluttony is reason enough to see a movie, and few epics overstuff the eyes like this one.

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.

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.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

300 is "Gladiator" for the gamer set.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The average user rating for this movie is 6.9 (out of 10) based on 773 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Nick gave it a10:
I have never met anyone, *ever* in real life who hasn't loved this movie. Young and old alike, friend and foe. I cant belive these rating are so low. I own a "300" T-shirt; I get complements all day when i wear that thing. There is something seriously wrong when a movie like "the mist" gets a better rating than an instant classic like "300".

Kevin A gave it a9:
This movie is the perfect action movie. While the storyline isn't too solid, it doesn't have to be. The fight scenes more than make up for the lack of thrilling plot. The Persians are attacking the Greeks, and the Spartans wont have it. The council wont let the whole army fight, so 300 men stand up to an entire army. It's a true story of valor and honor that is anything but easy to find in today's society. If you're looking for a good action movie with amazing fight scenes, then 300 is the movie for you.

Sarah C. gave it a10:
I thought this was an utterly inspiring and moving film from start to finish. Sure it was highly interspersed with CG, holding it that much further away from reality, but do we go to films to watch straight cut- to- screen believable themes? Not all the time. It didn't dally about with crap, it cut to the point and no, it didn't leave much to the imagination but it didn't have to. It laid everything out for you to just enjoy.The musical score was moving, the visual lighting set the right mood -harsh, aggressive, dark and powerful. As a woman, the visuals never suited me any better. The sad thing is, these type of men actually don't exsist in real life. Ones who are willing to fight for their right to live, for their people and their country. These men have no fear and real honour in themselves, who could ask for more? The fact that it was set in a time before guns and nuclear weapons is a breath of fresh air too, the violence in it didn't make me want to throw up like so many modern day "action films" try to make their audience do. I'd see this film over most of the rubbish currently airing, if i wanted to see another will ferrel movie i'd have myself committed. 300 is highly enjoyable, send a few Spartans round to my place any day.

Rick S. gave it a2:
I really looked foward to this movie, and what i got was 4 scenes of nudity, 3 scenes of fighting, 15 scenes of really good puch lines and dialogue, thats it. Did i mention how claustrophobic i felt through out the whole movie. Every single scene was rushed, nothing was ever open-ended, I was expecting something as grand and some what meaning full as Gladiator,(hell even Kingdom of Heaven was better), but what i watched was fast pasted nothing. I'm very sure fanboys will eat this sh!t up, but i really thought it was a saturday cable movie. Nothing ground breaking, nothing instesting, just abs and t!ts, oh and some stabbings. The one thing i did enjoy in this movie was the wonderful costume design and the score, the music really tried harder than the pictures in this film. Overall the low score is deserving(even Halo has more emotional moments than this), I can't really get over how people are comparing this to the Matrix. Wow a huge let down, i'm really not looking foward to any Zack Snyder films. What a brilliant idea,too bad, it got caught up in an MTV, HBO type style of film. By the end of the movie i was waiting for the two parties, the Iranians, i mean Perians and the Americans, damn, i mean Greeks, to whip out machine guns and start shooting, sadly this never happened!

whatever gave it a3:
Mindless violence masked as a deep storied action movie 90% of the movie was slow motion so there is just about half as much actual film presented For how many Persians are in the battle and how close of quarters they were fighting in, the battles were far too spacious I don't know how people think that some unshaven man screaming "This is Sparta!!" and kicking someone is so cool and, thusly, should be applied to everything in life Everyone bought into this cheap attempt at a real action movie and it's very irritating to hear people, primarily those who give off an aura of intellectually lacking, say this is the best movie ever.

Jef E. gave it a3:
The only reason I'm giving 3 are for the visuals. It worked as a graphic novel because you create the ambience in your imagination, and it just wasn;t replicated here. Unfortunately the script and Zack Snyder's characterisations were underwhelming at best. I must say my girlfriend loved it, albeit for the obvious reasons.

Bangell gave it a7:
It may not be historically accurate. The plot may not be intricate or interesting. But this film rocks for its amazing action. The line, THIS IS SPARTA!!! will be bellowed by people worldwide forever!

300 Warner Bros. Pictures

300
Warner Bros. Pictures