Well there's no getting around the fact this is a fun movie to watch, although maybe someone should turn down the contrast a little. It was like each scene was kind of smudged, (almost like they borrowed the graphics from Gladiator and were just trying to hide them) Was this supposed to remind me-- oh, this story is in the past. Well, since I'm not that dumb-- I mean, I can see this isn't a modern story-- it was kind of annoying. On a whole it's alot like Sin City, only it's daylight-- as far as the filming went. I really like the action scenes here. They didn't do that blurry special effect thing, just slowed things down, which was more realistic to my mind. The story is good, though I couldn't figure out why the Persian Army didn't bring any siege weapons with them and knock down that little wall-- oh well. And just so everyone's knows, this isn't a straight up historical movie about this event, they embellished-- actually they tried to make a little LOTR cgi and monsters out of the Persians, which now that I think about it kind of rubs me the wrong way too. Still, escapism by any other name is still escapism. Recommended.