Wholesale human slaughter never looked so pretty as in this heavily stylized rendering of the battle of Thermopylae in ancient Greece. MOVIE REVIEW 300 DIRECTOR: Zack Snyder CAST: Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, David Wenham, Dominic West, Rodrigo Santoro RUNNING TIME: 117 minutes RATING: R for graphic battle sequences throughout, some sexuality and nudity GRADE: B+ LINKS/TRAILERS · Official site PHOTO GALLERY View all photos Under roiling skies, a small band of gruff, buff and bloodthirsty Spartans boost their spears through opposing chests with balletic grace, hack limbs into time-shifted crimson spray, and hurl the limitless Persian corpses to build a grisly wall of defense. Astonishingly, all of this is accomplished in sandals and Speedos. Most viewers will likely be unfamiliar with Herodotus' account of the valiant but doomed confrontation between a small force of 300 Greeks and the army of Xerxes in the Persian War of the fifth century, B.C. But many are sure to recognize the computer-enhanced imagery of "Sin City," the prior attempt to transfer the operatic intensity of a graphic novel by Frank Miller to the screen. Miller's telling is a comic-book version of how righteous King Leonides (Gerard Butler) chooses war over submission to the Persians and leads his Spartan soldiers, in defiance of the priestly oracles, to glorious death in defense of freedom. The historical tale is embellished with treachery at home and Queen Gorgo's (Lena Headey) ignored pleas for reinforcements to help her husband. Director Zack Snyder uses his computers to create ferocious and painterly images, with as much attention to each frame as a hand-drawn panel. Leonides, with curls and beard, looks as if he stepped off of a Grecian urn. The Persians' boast that their arrows will be so numerous that they will block out the sun is made true, giving the Spartans the opportunity to fight in the shade according to their famous retort. The battle scenes in particular seem to draw on the conventions of video games, with melees that suddenly slow as if our hero had devoured a power pellet. Informed more by J.R.R. Tolkien than Herodotus, monsters and the misshapen populate the ranks of Xerxes' army, giving each of the Spartans' engagements the character of leveling-up to the next round. Inexplicably, the Persians bear no resemblance to their historical appearance; Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) is portrayed as a stately, but hairless collection of piercings, looking as if someone attacked RuPaul with a stapler. Yet, in a strange way, it may require these broad strokes to roughly convey the extremes of ancient history. The Spartans, martial in every facet of their lives, seemed strange even to other Greeks, and the Persians may have looked supernaturally powerful. There's bravery in that, too. - Gianni Truzzi, Seattle P-I