Directed by Zack Snyder Starring Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, Dominic West, David Wenham, Vincent Regan » View on IMDB Rated 4.0/5.0, based on 1060 reviews. Buy from Amazon: New price: $4.82 Used price: $3.48

Infantile Racist Claptrap Projecting US Demonization of Iran into Antiquity
Rating: 1/5
I watched this film as it was on Sky Premiere yesterday and just had to comment about this ludicrous racist claptrap, worse than a throwback to 19th Century Orientalist myths.I had just finished reading The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity (written by an Israeli. A recent History Channel programme entitled Sparta actually had American professors exclaiming that the Spartans saved Western Democracy!!! Such brazen false propaganda and conflation of such distant and indirectly connected historical phenomena raises the question of the level of intellectual ability and reasoning capacity required to become a professor of Ancient History in the USA and the pretended impartiality of the presentations of Western documentaries. Kostos Vlassopolous (a real Greek),in his recent Unthinking the Greek Polis, the question of how modern Westerners have appropriated the clearly non-Western ancient Greeks as their supposed genius progenitors. Martin Bernal in his famous Black Athena: The Afro-Asiatic Roots of Classical Civilization also showed how Western 'Classics' had fabricated the myth of Ancient Greece. More recently, given that this absurd film ends with the claim that Plataea was a victory against Mysticism and Tyranny, one should note that Plato (a century after Plataea) is quite clearly a mystic and philosophy is itself a mystical enterprise for him although Western historians and Classicists have distorted the true meanings of Plato to make him appear like a modern Westerner (see Thomas McEvilley's The Shape of Ancient Thought). Furthermore, as McEvilley and others note, the Greek simpletons would not even have had philosophia and transcendental monism if the Persian Achaemenid empire had not allowed the Greeks in Ionia to encounter Indian yogis from whom the Greeks learnt of the transcendental and philosophia (the love of divine wisdom - a clearly mystical practise- Plato talks of opening the Inner Eye and being flooded with (divine) Light)etc. as well as transcending Reason).
To all the teenage boys who watch this childish film, I suggest that you note the following. Persians were not Black africans as the early part of this film portrays them. Spartans were totalitarian, proto-fascist slave owners (not shown on the film) who went to war each with 7 Greek helot slaves accompanying them! The Greek city of Argos refused to fight with the Greeks as they were at war with Sparta and would rather be ruled by Persia than Spartans! The Persians allowed democracy to be maintained in the Ionian Greek City states which revolted against them. Most Greek city states were not democratic. Sparta asked the tyrant of Syracuse in Sicily to help fight Xerxes. As Isaacs notes, the Greeks were not fighting for individual liberty, simply against collective foreign subjugation. Plato detested Democracy. Only male citizens of pure-lineage had the vote in Athens (the modern West and its 'democracy' are rooted in the more recent Protestant Reformation in Western Europe not in ancient Greece). After Plataea, Xerxes invited a Spartan commander to a feast. As Herodotus, the first historian wrote, the Persians more than any other peoples acknowledged valour in their opponents. Sparta and Athens, after defeating Xerxes went on to imperialist subjugation and enslavement of other Greeks! Spartas success in the Peloponnesian War against Athens was funded largely by Persia!
The Greek speaking part of the Roman Empire became Byzantine and the Greek Church the Eastern Orthodox Church as opposed to western Roman Chrsitianity from which the modern West arose. On a British documentary about Stalin, his father-in-law is supposed to have stated that Stalin was a tyrant as he was an Asiatic from Georgia. In fact, Georgians are the descendants of the Greeks (Colchis etc.)! Unlike Greece, slavery was uncommon in ancient India (in contrast to the Asiatic slavery myth). Modern Greece itself was partly the creation of Western Romantics (like Byron) whereas the natives of the Greek peninsula under Ottoman rule called themselves Romii and spoke Romaika.
Thus those of you teenagers with a little bit of brainpower should treat this racist nonsense and the historians on History Channel etc. spurting their bile about ancient Greece with the contempt it deserves.

Awesome but...
Rating: 4/5
I'm not actually reviewing the movie itself (which is an instant classic and a movie any self-respecting man should own), but I want to say a couple things about the fact that is a Blu-ray.
I have seen both the HD-DVD version and this one hoping to see some notable difference between the versions and... well, no.
Same picture quality, same sound, same extras, everything...
I do highly recommend this movie, but to me it lost one star for not having anything... "extra".

"300" - Perfect in Bowling, not so Perfect Here
Rating: 3/5
"300" is a testosterone-drenched and fanciful account of Sparta's heroic albeit doomed stand at Thermopylae against the Persian hordes. You have here enough violence for three Sam Peckinpah movies, with buckets full of blood left over.

It's interesting that apparently the Greek warrior must have studied at Harrow, as they all speak with veddy British accents.

As to how Xerxes and his minions are portrayed, let's just say you could have titled it, "Queer Eye for the Persian Guy."

Not for the squeamish!

This movie has great action and a even greater heart!
Rating: 5/5
I wholeheartedly enjoyed 300 because the movie works on so many levels. It has the action, stunning visuals, and most importantly a story that sticks with you long after the credits roll. Who wouldn't enjoy a movie about freedom, sacrifice, loss, honor, nation, and all the ideals that our western civilization is based on.
300 is quintessentially impassioned film making that actually has something to say about society and I highly recommend it. Watching it on Bluray only makes it even better!