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300 [HD DVD] [2007] | ![300 [HD DVD] [2007]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51qh4Hzca-L._SL160_.jpg)
 enlarge | Director: Zack Snyder
Actors: Gerard Butler, Rodrigo Santoro, David Wenham, Michael Fassbender
Studio: Warner Home Video
Category: DVD
List Price: £27.99
Buy New: £3.94
You Save: £24.05 (86%)
New (11) Used (9) from £3.69
Rating:  41 reviews
Format: Pal
Languages: English (Unknown), English (Original Language)
Rating: To Be Announced
Media: HD DVD
Region: 2
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 116 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
EAN: 7321900137645
ASIN: B000VE2M2O
Theatrical Release Date: 2007
Release Date: October 1, 2007
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 This is SPARTA! July 15, 2007
E. A Solinas (MD USA)
24 out of 26 found this review helpful
Frank Miller adaptations are on a roll. First we got "Sin City," and now we have the story of three hundred Spartans who repelled a massive invasion.
And the adaptation of "300" is a stunning one -- literally stunning, since it bombards the viewer with larger-than-life characters, smashing visuals and tight direction. It goes a bit too fast for its own good, but it's a truly epic film that takes the historical war movie to another level -- all the more so because it actually happened.
As the introduction tells us, the Spartans were the ultimate warrior people. Babies were inspected for weakness or faults, and killed if they had any; as they were growing up, they were taught and toughened by a savage regimen. Their only true hope was to "die beautifully" for their land.
A Persian messenger arrives, telling King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) that the god-king Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) wants the Spartans to bow to him. Leonidas' response: shove the Persians into a pit. But before he can go to war, he must consult the corrupt priesthood of Ephors and their beautiful Oracle. She predicts that Sparta will fall and the gods forbid war at the approach of the Carneaian festival -- courtesy of a hefty bribe from a Spartan traitor.
So Leonidas takes out three hundred of his best men, along with their nervy Arcadian allies, and begin trouncing the Persians. But they are being sabotaged, both by a hunchbacked outcast and by a treacherous councilor, whom Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) is battling. And so at Thermopylae, Leonidas prepares for a final battle against the monstrous Persian Army -- knowing that their story of freedom will live on.
This is not a "sensitive" movie where you have any appreciation for the bad guys -- it's a glorification of three hundred soldiers who died for their land and freedom. It just wouldn't work otherwise. It doesn't blindly adore the Spartans -- we see their darker side in their "weed out the weak" policy -- but it does appreciate them. They respect and care about each other, and Leonidas is as kind as he can be even to Ephialtes, the traitor.
And it's done in a manner appropriate to its comic book origins -- grimy, bloody and epic, but with a stylized look that is almost like CGI. The battles are shockingly good, and full of fantasy-ish creations like the monstrous creatures or the silver-masked Immortals. Even a wall of corpses. But we also get some beautiful visuals as well -- roiling seas, sunlit battlefields, Spartan cities, and the drugged Oracle in her white veil.
While the script gets a bit over-the-top at times, it's hard not to be moved by dialogue that can be darkly funny ("It's just an eye. The gods saw fit to grace me with a spare") or stirring ("He did not wish tribute, nor song, or monuments or poems of war and valor. His wish was simple: "Remember us." That was his hope, should any free soul come across that place, in all the countless centuries yet to be").
Butler and Headey are simply great as Leonidas and Gorgo -- they're both strong, passionate and fearless, and they both do a great job in their separate storylines. But the movie is filled with good performances -- David Wenham as the narrator, Dominic West as a disgusting traitor, Santoro as the decadent, arrogant god-king, and many others.
"300" is a unique, stirring, stunning movie that pushes the action-movie envelope, and gives a thrilling edge to a real-life story of overwhelming edge. A brilliant movie.
No Region Coding August 7, 2007
Schmitty (London)
15 out of 15 found this review helpful
Just wanted to confirm what others indicate - the disc has no region coding so will work on UK Blu-Ray players including PS3. Great film & awesome in high-def.
THIS IS... HD DVD!!!! October 9, 2007
K. Ng (UK)
14 out of 15 found this review helpful
The graphic novel of Frank Miller's 300 comes home to your home tv on HD DVD!
King Leonidas and his 300 Spartan warriors fight to the death against the god-king Xerxes and his massive Persian army to protect his homeland, his people and his queen and son.
Well I'm not gonna give away my opinions about this film.. Its a movie people either love or hate, what I will give is insight to the HD DVD version of this epic movie.
Sound And Vision.
The soundtrack is very crisp and clear and especially, if you got a decent home cinema set up is the only way to give this movie justice. The quieter scenes are well.. quiet but its the fight scenes the sound and music give that 'in your face' feel especially when swords slice and dice! There's some really nice deep 'booms' in there provided by the drums.
Picture, well I'm not sure if this is something that you can show off to people in order to wow them over the wonders of "High Definition" because there is some graininess to the picture. You have to realize that in order to give the film its gritty and dark mood its done intentionally in an artistic way as well as the muting the colours. A few friends of mine didn't realize this because they were nitpicking about "since this is suppose to be high definition and super sharp.. why is the picture grainy"?
However 300 on HD DVD (video quality is 1080p, high definition 16x9, 2:4:1 screen ratio) offers very sharp images and the dark rich contrasts and blacks just leave you staring fixated onto the screen.
OK, if you are neutral in the format war (ie blu ray VS hd dvd) and buy films on both formats, I would advise you to get the HD dvd version because there are extras not featured on any other format. Apart from the usual; additional scenes, Frank Miller's interview, facts on Spartans, webisodes there are some exlusives only to HD DVD. (some of these are not in HD they are shot in standard DVD format)
If you care about these HD DVD extras you will get:
Bluescreen picture-in-picture. Basically this is the whole movie played alongside with a smaller 'in-picture' movie of the original film shoot without any of the computer added effects so you get to see how it looked before and after all the fancy stuff was put on while having the film director Zack Snyder talk about how it was done etc. throughout the whole movie.
pick your favourite scenes. Assemble your favourite clips from 300 and create your own movie montage! This is a little fiddly but practise and you will get better at it! If your hd dvd player has access to the internet you can upload your creation onto the web and let other people download your creative movie and rate it, or download other people's and view theirs and rate them!
Vengeance and Valour. This is a strategy war game where you move around a map and taking down Xerxes forces and depending on if you win or lose you get a clip from the film.. its a little confusing at first but once u get the hang of things its entertaining for a while..
It is these extras especially the internet ones that provide a reason to show off what HD DVD can do.
Some of these extras require you to enable cookie downloads on your HD DVD player.
 At least it looked good November 1, 2007
A. Weaver (Somewhere in England)
12 out of 43 found this review helpful
I'm gonna make this really easy for you to understand; I don't want there to be any confusion you see. This film is not very good; there are certainly some good things about it, but the film itself as a whole is not very good. I could end this review right there but as I sat through the film I might as well tell you why it's not very good and you might as well read my review. And then say it was helpful. Please!
Anyway, to start with the acting isn't very good. It's all a bunch of half naked guys shouting a bunch of rubbish about wanting to die for Sparta and talking some nonsense about their gods and honour and all that toss. They are all stereotyped soldiers. The females are all either mostly half nude, kissing each other, dancing for some utterly unexplained reason, or babbling some other rubbish about the story. Yeah, I know that's normally a good thing to have in a film, but really all we want to see is a bunch of people getting horribly killed, right? Exactly. Oh, and by the way, all the females (well, I say all but there's only one female main character) are stereotyped and boring. Everyone is in this film. Clearly none of the actors or the director has even heard of the term characterisation. And just in case you'd forgotten, all the acting is rubbish, too. But you probably hadn't forgotten.
Okay, so do you really wanna know what the story is? You do? A bunch of soldiers kill a bunch of other soldiers. There's something about politics in there but as this is hardly I, Claudius, it's awfully done and really, really boring. That's it for two hours.
Now, there is something else I've got to mention. The Persians. What the hell is going on with them? I know someone else has already mentioned this but I've just gotta say something as well. I mean, what is wrong with them? They look more like creatures from Resident Evil or Doom than human beings. One of them was even half a goat for crying out loud. What is that?! Half a goat! It's hilarious. Really, this film is more an alright comedy than a rubbish action type film.
So, is there anything good about this film? Yes, there is, and that's the fact that it really does look incredible. The way it's been filmed and whole feel is very cool and very comic book looking. Shame it's the only good thing about it, though.
Okay, so that's my review. Don't buy this film.
This is SPARTA! May 21, 2007
E. A Solinas (MD USA)
11 out of 14 found this review helpful
Frank Miller adaptations are on a roll. First we got "Sin City," and now we have the story of three hundred Spartans who repelled a massive invasion.
And the adaptation of "300" is a stunning one -- literally stunning, since it bombards the viewer with larger-than-life characters, smashing visuals and tight direction. It goes a bit too fast for its own good, but it's a truly epic film that takes the historical war movie to another level -- all the more so because it actually happened.
As the introduction tells us, the Spartans were the ultimate warrior people. Babies were inspected for weakness or faults, and killed if they had any; as they were growing up, they were taught and toughened by a savage regimen. Their only true hope was to "die beautifully" for their land.
A Persian messenger arrives, telling King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) that the god-king Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) wants the Spartans to bow to him. Leonidas' response: shove the Persians into a pit. But before he can go to war, he must consult the corrupt priesthood of Ephors and their beautiful Oracle. She predicts that Sparta will fall and the gods forbid war at the approach of the Carneaian festival -- courtesy of a hefty bribe from a Spartan traitor.
So Leonidas takes out three hundred of his best men, along with their nervy Arcadian allies, and begin trouncing the Persians. But they are being sabotaged, both by a hunchbacked outcast and by a treacherous councilor, whom Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) is battling. And so at Thermopylae, Leonidas prepares for a final battle against the monstrous Persian Army -- knowing that their story of freedom will live on.
This is not a "sensitive" movie where you have any appreciation for the bad guys -- it's a glorification of three hundred soldiers who died for their land and freedom. It just wouldn't work otherwise. It doesn't blindly adore the Spartans -- we see their darker side in their "weed out the weak" policy -- but it does appreciate them. They respect and care about each other, and Leonidas is as kind as he can be even to Ephialtes, the traitor.
And it's done in a manner appropriate to its comic book origins -- grimy, bloody and epic, but with a stylized look that is almost like CGI. The battles are shockingly good, and full of fantasy-ish creations like the monstrous creatures or the silver-masked Immortals. Even a wall of corpses. But we also get some beautiful visuals as well -- roiling seas, sunlit battlefields, Spartan cities, and the drugged Oracle in her white veil.
While the script gets a bit over-the-top at times, it's hard not to be moved by dialogue that can be darkly funny ("It's just an eye. The gods saw fit to grace me with a spare") or stirring ("He did not wish tribute, nor song, or monuments or poems of war and valor. His wish was simple: "Remember us." That was his hope, should any free soul come across that place, in all the countless centuries yet to be").
Butler and Headey are simply great as Leonidas and Gorgo -- they're both strong, passionate and fearless, and they both do a great job in their separate storylines. But the movie is filled with good performances -- David Wenham as the narrator, Dominic West as a disgusting traitor, Santoro as the decadent, arrogant god-king, and many others.
"300" is a unique, stirring, stunning movie that pushes the action-movie envelope, and gives a thrilling edge to a real-life story of overwhelming edge. A brilliant movie.
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