The movie's a blast, not to be taken as history. I find it amusing how the lib movie reviewers are having trouble making up their minds about it. www.slate.com's Dana Stevens essentially thrashed the movie exclusively on the basis that it doesn't throw in any ham-handed anti-Iraq war or Bush-bashing references.
I'm no fan of the totalitarian, enslaving, child-abusing Spartans, but I'll never be hip and enlightened enough to not appreciate great acts of heroism.
p.s. Ol' Xerxes must be spinning at his portrayal as a jewel-bedecked, gold-loinclothed, homoerotic giant. Hyuk, yuk.
You will hear from my lawyer.
You nailed it old sport. A one-sentence review of the review.
She too goes off the deep end with this transparent lie:
"When a messenger from Xerxes arrives bearing news Leonidas doesn't like, he hurls the man, against all protocol, down a convenient bottomless well in the center of town. "This is blasphemy! This is madness!" says the messenger, pleading for his life. "This is Sparta," Leonidas replies...
"against all protocol"!? She wants us to believe that the phrase "hey, don't kill the messenger!" doesn't exist or has no factual basis? And that we didn't see Leonidas explicitly announce this factual basis earlier in that very scene?
But hey, the ends always justify the ends; in this case, the lie is used to draw a parallel to GWB:
"...So, if Spartan law is defined by "whatever Leonidas wants," what are the 300 fighting for, anyway? And why does that sound depressingly familiar?