WHO STARRED IN THE MOVIE 300 SERIES

'300' is often like watching that buddy play a video game. 'Sin City' was like watching your buddy get a lap dance.

It's a testament to the inherent cinematic depth of Miller's graphic novels that the movies based on them are so vicariously dull. Otherwise, the movie is busy trumpeting such abstract principles as Glory, Duty, and Destiny, in speeches roared by the cast as though Herodotus himself had written them. He's like Sean Connery doing Robert Duvall in 'Apocalypse Now' in a chicer version of the costume Connery wore in 'Zardoz.' Butler gives us a flash of hunky, clunky Richard Egan in 1962's ' The 300 Spartans,' too. Once, he chomps on an apple atop of a pile of massacred Persians. The movie needs more of the campy bluster the Scottish Butler injects into a few scenes. Boredom builds up between the artificial opera of the battles like plaque. When the men aren't fighting, though, the movie is almost dead. (There's a sex scene that seems shot at the same speed, but the brawls are less ludicrous.)Д«lending digital fakery with real athleticism, these are show-stopping sequences that deserve an ovation for the technicians, stunt coordinators, and production-design team who've brought them off. It's as if everybody is slaughtering everybody else underwater. Scenes of the men slashing and impaling each other, while muscle rock plays on the soundtrack, are usually chaotically edited, but occasionally the frame slows so that the maneuvering and stabbing and leaping and linebacking operate at a dreamy clip.

The brawling sequences have a kind of visual awesomeness. While Leonidas and his men are off bludgeoning for valor, his wife, Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey), remains behind both to ward off the leering insinuations of Theron (Dominic West), a scheming politico, and to urge the government to commit more troops to back her husband. Sparta's King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) defies the will of the Greek people and the governing council, leading his men to their legendary doom. There, in 480 BC, the Spartans try to hold off what they think is a million or so Persian invaders from entering central Greece. Gordon, and the director Zach Snyder, whose other movie is 2004's 'Dawn of the Dead' remake, '300' brings us the mythic Battle of Thermopylae - also known as the Hot Gates - as narrated in a spirited storybook manner by the Spartan battler Dilios (David Wenham, an Australian). Indeed, if you happen to enjoy spending almost two hours watching a bunch of worked-out UK thespians battle for the survival of Hellenism in only sandals, leather codpieces, and vermilion capes, run don't walk. They appear to have spent the entire production at whatever gym Hercules went to. It could be somebody's hard drive.Д®ither way, the film never feels like more than an exercise, for the filmmakers and the actors.

WHO STARRED IN THE MOVIE 300 SERIES

Imagine a large cast trapped in a series of spectacular screensavers.

But there's a stale, synthetic airlessness about the movie. Then, sadly, I'm no longer the sort of lad who goes for souped-up remixes of, say, 'Gladiator.'ДЇor fans of the Frank Miller-Lynn Varley graphic novel from which '300' has been adapted, the movie parks itself in the big manly wheelhouse of lots of filmgoers. But that number could also represent the number of stars many of the exhilarated boys would give this movie upon exiting - 'boy' being a state of mind, of course. And then of course came Magneto - the irresistible villain role that gave Sir Ian McKellen's older, more regal version a troubled, raw-pricked past to wonderful success.The title of '300,' the new piece of Hollywood action porn, refers to the number of Spartan warriors who futilely but audaciously took on the Persians oh-so many centuries ago. Sadly, potential doesn't always translate into greatness immediately, and the film is one of the few red marks in his ledger. Having broken out with Hunger 2 years later, more opportunities came his way, including the 2010 chance to play a part in what should have been the great adaptation of Jonah Hex starring Josh Brolin. His energetic, naive warrior Stelios added a fool-hardly vulnerability to the ranks of chiselled supermen, and he was arguably one of the more relatable elements of Snyder's aesthetically biased adaptation. Before he was perfectly cast as the young Magneto in Matthew Vaughn's First Class preboot-quel of the X-Men franchise, Fassbender started well with a supporting role in hyper-stylised 300, for what was his first major film role. Michael Fassbender - Jonah Hex/X-Men: First Class/300 Though an unfeasibly talented actor, Michael Fassbender is a lesson for cinephiles that bad comic book movies can happen to anyone.

Who starred in the movie 300