300

300 is an ultra-stylish, ultra-violent movie re-imagining of the most famous last-stand in ancient history - the Spartans' heroic, suicidal rear-guard action against vastly overwhelming Persian numbers at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. It's based - pretty much frame-for-frame - on Frank Miller's graphic novel of the same name, and stars Gerard Butler as the gruff Spartan King Leonidas, Rodrigo Santoro as the androgynous Persian "God king" Xerxes, Dominic West as the trecherous Spartan politician Theon and Lena Headey as Leonidas' feisty Queen Gorgo.

During the second Persian invasion of Greece, Xerxes requests a token surrender from the Spartans - the warlike Greek tribe who are the dominant military force in Greece. Surrender and submission is contrary to Spartan values, so the ripped, raging Leonidas violently refuses and - against the wishes of his council - marches out with a band of 300 similarly tough Spartan soldiers to face the Persian horde (said to number in the millions) at the Hot Gates - a narrow pass at Thermopylae. There, he uses the terrain and his men's highly advanced fighting skills as force multipliers, and manages to hold off the Persians - in a string of visciously bloody encounters - for three days before finally succumbing, after being betrayed by a disillusioned Greek.

The movie is a feast of spectacular CGI violence and ripped-chested machismo, and proved a smash hit at the box office, scoring the 24th highest opening weekend taking in movie history (its gross revenue to date is $456,068,181). Critics were more often than not hard on 300 however, attacking its lack of characterisation, questionable politics and highly-selective reading of history. For all of its faults, it looks stunning and succeeds impressively in its hyper-real representations of the bloody, gore-splattered ancient battlefield.