Like Sin City before it, 300 brings Frank Miller and Lynn Varley's graphic novel vividly to life. Gerard Butler (Beowulf and Grendel, The Phantom of the Opera) radiates pure power and charisma as Leonidas, the Grecian king who leads 300 of his fellow Spartans (including David Wenham of The Lord of the Rings, Michael Fassbender, and Andrew Pleavin) into a battle against the overwhelming force of Persian invaders. Their only hope is to neutralize the numerical advantage by confronting the Persians, led by King Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro), at the narrow strait of Thermopylae.

Buyers Beware...

This has nothing to do with the movie. The movie itself is Great!
I'm not sure if this is Amazon's fault but when I receive the movie it has fingerprints on it. I originally bought this on black friday and I bought it as brand new but when I received the DVD it is clearly used and has a lot of fingerprints and scratches. Just HORRIBLE!!! NOT ACCEPTABLE!!! BUYERS BEWARE!

What a Bargain!!

I loved this movie when it first showed at theaters. I never did purchase the DVD until Black Friday, the day after Christmas. I'm glad I waited! $6.99 for this 2-disc set! The movie itself is great (as long as you're not too squeamish about blood). Highly recommended.

Saving Western Civilization

This film takes quite a bit of dramatic license in presenting the story of 300 Spartans, led by one of their kings, who stood against the armies of Xerxes as the Persian Empire attempted to annex the Greek states. The Persian Empire, composed of many conquered peoples, represented the autocratic despotism of the slave state while the Greeks, for all their faults, represented the future of western civilization. Having invented democracy, a usable phonetic alphabet, rhetoric and philosophy the Greeks and their culture would have a long-lasting impact that would last right up to modern times. Had Xerxes managed to defeat the Spartans under Leonidas quickly and destroy the various Greek states before they could fully mobilize then the spark which lit our civilization would have been snuffed out.

It is interesting that Sparta, which represented all that was bad in Greek civilization, was the city-state which saved civilization. Centered around war, harshly administered and with a slave caste which provided targets for training their soldiers Sparta was NOT a democracy.

All that aside, the story as told in the film is a moving one and it meets all the marks. The nudity seems a bit unnecessary but the violence depicted, if anything, was probably not as graphic as what it actually looked like.