Wick's Review

Summary - Good 3.0

Highly stylized though affecting movie brings a comik sensibility to an ancient battle. I ended up liking it more than I thought I would, since King Leonidas makes a great hero and his wife a worthy Queen.

Acting - Good 3.0

The actors come through the comic book gloss effectively, though there isn’t much opportunity to distinguish themselves.

Film - Good 3.0

Edge - Sordid 3.0

Reality - Surreal 2.8

The fantastic liberties range from the minor (the perfect abs of each and every Spartan warrior) to the major (demonic wolves, an inhuman giant, dwarfs). Call me old fashioned, but the movie would have been just as entertaining – even in its comic book style – if the creatures (human and others) had been recognizably natural.

2 Comments

• Spaceghost May 19, 2008 6:23AM

  Thank you for the kind words. I’ll be honest, though, I wasn’t too sure of the movie at first for much the same reasons. I thought it was visually excellent, but it was a departure from the comic and I was a huge fan of the comic from day one. The comic was not anywhere near as polished or pretty. It was very rough and brutal. A lot of the same story elements were there, but the look was much, much different. But the more I thought about it and after the second viewing things fell into place and felt much better for me. Now its got to be one of my favorites out there.

• Wick May 18, 2008 4:21PM

  Wow. Great review Spaceghost! You make such a passionate and well argued case for the movie’s perfection that I was left wondering why the Trust Weighted Score was only a Good. So I went browsing through the reviews and it turns out I’m part of the reason. (Oops, “I’ve met the enemy, and it is me.”)

  So now I want to see the movie again, perhaps to raise the rating upon second viewing.

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