Apart from its pro-war propaganda, which comes in the form of unrelenting voice-over narration, "300" is a dog of a movie where cookie-cutter CGI battle scenes show thirty actors pretending to fight to the death. Adapted from Frank Miller and Lynn Varley’s graphic novel, "300" is based on the famous battle of Thermopylae wherein Spartan King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) and 300 career soldiers held off hundreds of thousands of Persian troops. Director Zack Snyder ("Dawn of the Dead"- 2004) pushes into the realm of camp with buff soldiers wearing leather briefs that make them look like male strippers at the end of their act. The evil Persian King Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) provides a camp coup de grace with plucked eyebrows, a megaphone voice and lots of gold chains to solidify Snyder’s torpid war porn mini epic. Special features include: English, Spanish and French languages (English and French subtitles), a commentary track with Director Zack Snyder, Cinematographer Larry Fong, and Writer Kurt Johnstad. Six "making-of" featurettes, 20 webisodes and a collection of deleted scenes. Aspect ratio is 2.35:1 with sound quality processed in Dolby Digital 5.1.
(Movie – One Star, DVD features – Three Stars) Rated R, 117 mins. (Warner Bros.)
