300

a retelling of the classic Spartan Army vs Xerxes Army story, given a CGI twist this time around. Gerrard Butler plays Leonidus, the king of the Spartans who takes the 300 soldiers who have been doing their stomach crunches most into battle against hoards of enemy soldiers.

It sounds like a video game and it looks like one, with the fighters taking on wave after wave of enemies. The plot is fairly shallow but the fighting does keep you engaged for the 2 hours runtime. It could have been a lot shorter but for effect a lot of the film is shown in slow motion. There are some great fight sequences particularly those that feature the spartans pairing up, those did impress me.

Acting quality is pretty ropey throughout but there's enough flesh for the women and violence for the men to disguise it. Gerrard does shout a lot in this movie, and I don't know if its just me but whenever I hear a Scotsman shout I expect him to say "Contestant, you will go on my first whistle. Gladiator, you will go on my second whistle", but rather disappointingly its not said in this.

I also noticed that the queen, who is actually a good character and not the Hollywood dumb female you usually get in action flicks, has a BCG scar on her arm. I guess they either missed this or left it in to give attention-to-detail freaks like myself something to comment on.

Visually the film is stunning, and deserves to win Best Portrayal of a Cornfield in this year's Oscars. If scenes look like paintings then I think they pass the visual test and I wouldn't mind having some shots of this film on my wall (just not any scenes that feature naked men showing off their abs)

I will admit to learning a couple of things from this film. Firstly, I now know how to pronounce "Xerxes" and secondly I can now say that I've seen an elephant fall of a cliff; never though I'd ever see that.