300

Review in a Hurry:  A lavish visualization of Frank Miller's graphic novel about the battle of Thermopylae, in which 300 Spartan soldiers fought so well that people are still talking about it 2,500 years later.

The Bigger Picture:  Zack Snyder, who directed the Dawn of the Dead remake a few years back, clearly has a way with bloodthirsty hordes. 300 has a plot, actors and dialogue, but if you stripped those things away you'd still have a stunning piece of filmmaking on your hands, a giddily gory, supercharged comic book that is, for action-movie fans, one money shot after another. From the moment King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) takes his tiny army off to fight the Persians, it's clear there's going to be a hell of a fight, and 300 doesn't disappoint.

Granted, the plot is as bare as the film's hunky Spartan warriors, who prove their mettle by fighting with little more than a shield, spear, flowing red cape and Speedo. The script isn't much more robust, but the actors spit their words and chew the scenery with an admirable you-gotta-do-what-you-gotta-do mentality that echoes 300's grim last-stand storyline.

But 300's expository scenes are only servants of the action anyway, a meager price you pay for beautifully choreographed battle scenes. Snyder's fancy camerawork translates 300 from the page so well that it looks more like a comic book than even Sin City. Scenes ebb, flow and freeze in time with the perfectly matched score, and images last just long enough for you to savor them, before being replaced by something equally startling. As an example of what a filmmaker who commits to the craft can do, 300 is one in a thousand.

The 180—a Second Opinion:  It's not that 300 drags, but seriously, half the movie's in slow motion, and the half that isn't (attempts at poignancy, political maneuverings back home in Sparta) might as well be. And the gore, like everything else about the film, isn't remotely subtle.