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‘300’ is quite a silly piece of magical realism, by which I mean a historical fantasy adventure. It has the usual elements of such a fantasy: huge armies with swords and spears; tortured warrior-kings who want to do the best for their people; wild beasts of legendary proportions; a corrupt and powerful priestly caste.

This in itself makes quite a silly romp, but the presentation makes it even sillier. Painted skies less convincing than the huge matte paintings of the fifties, recolouring that makes everything look like it is made of rubber, CG-assisted extras and landscapes, cliché music, digitally changed voices, Jackanory-esque narrations, ponderous slow-motion scenes; the overall effect suggests that they were trying to distract from the more substantive shortcomings of the film. The mechanics of the battle that forms the backbone of this film really don't add up, which is a shame, because there is no plot to speak of --- none that you couldn't have seen coming from a mile away, in any case.

With this second adaptation of a Frank Miller drawn success, it was obviously hoped this would be as popular as the original, but it went slightly wrong somewhere. ‘Sin City’ was at once quirky and original. The narrative format was unusual for Hollywood, but it was carefully arranged. The colouring was extreme in a way never seen before. Even where it was silly, it was forgivably slick. Only dodgy sound quality let it down. But ‘300’ is unoriginal; the false-colour and adjusted lighting is merely an extreme use of widely-used techniques; and the battle scenes (i.e. most of the film) are worse choreographed than even the cheapest samurai films. The dialogue has the same stylised, unreal quality as ‘Sin City’, and in this it really bites hard, particularly when the Queen of Sparta is making her impassioned speech to the council. I winced out loud when she mentioned “freedom and justice”. I would say Lena Headey did the best she could with the material available, but the way she walked around with her brow in a permanent furrow suggested that may not have been the case. Rodrigo Santoro was no better as a Xerxes more camp than I would have imagined possible for the king of kings.

To be honest, if you want a good epic battle, you'd be better off with ‘Zulu Dawn’, ‘Zulu’, ‘El Cid’, or ‘Ben Hur’, all made in the days when the script could call for more than 20 extras or more than 100 square foot of landscape without involving a computer.