I am going to do a rare movie review, simply because I enjoyed the movie so much. The film in question is 300, and the subject is the stand of the Spartans at Thermopylae against the invading Persians. The critics, as so often happens, hate it. The people, as also so often happens in these cases, love it. The film had sold out the night before, and the theater was packed the night we went. It was #1 at the box office its opening weekend.

The movie is not a historical piece, being based on a graphic novel. It’s not Alexander. But that does not mean that it any less historically accurate than movies like Gladiator or Kingdom of Heaven, which take a kernal of actual events and build a fictional tale around them. Here we have Leonidas, the King of Sparta, a historical character. Much of what surrounds him is fictional but this is nothing new or unusual in Hollywood. It is not a failing, or if it is, it is a failing not limited to this film. I found myself loving everything the critics hate about it, including the sepia tones, the bombast, the violence. It is difficult to conceive of a film about a battle that is not violent and that seems a strange criticism to make.

At any rate, I include here the summary of the NY Times review simply to demonstrate that the movie criticism business is a strange one in that it has the less creative, the less talented, critiquing the work of the more talented and creative. I’m not sure what critics are looking for in movies; I can only say its seldom what I’m looking for, which is entertainment. This is a movie I’ll see again, given the chance, and when it comes out on DVD, I’ll be among the first to own it. Heck, I even want the soundtrack.

300
2007-US-Action/Adventure, Drama
N.Y. Times Review by A. O. Scott
REVIEW SUMMARY
“300” is about as violent as “Apocalypto” and twice as stupid. Adapted from a graphic novel by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley, it offers up a bombastic spectacle of honor and betrayal, rendered in images that might have been airbrushed onto a customized van sometime in the late 1970s. The basic story is a good deal older. It’s all about the ancient Battle of Thermopylae, which unfolded at a narrow pass on the coast of Greece whose name translates as Hot Gates. Zack Snyder’s first film, a remake of George Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead,” showed wit as well as technical dexterity. While some of that filmmaking acumen is evident here, the script for “300,” which he wrote with Kurt Johnstad and Michael B. Gordon, is weighed down by the lumbering portentousness of the original book, whose arresting images are themselves undermined by the kind of pomposity that frequently mistakes itself for genius. — A. O. Scott, The New York Times