In the ancient Greek realm of "300," manly Spartans apparently were required to keep at the ready a few important items: a shield, a spear, a sword, a helmet, a red cape and an Ab Roller.

Filmdom hasn't seen this much bulky, taut flesh since "Troy." Nor this much battle blood since "Braveheart." Nor this many super-imagined visuals since "Sin City."

"300" is all those movies and more. It's dark and fierce, a graphic-novel-in-motion full of beheadings, sliced body parts, spraying blood, female nudity, over-the-top creatures and rewritten history. Storywise, the film lasts about 15 minutes, but it's rendered in such persistent, occasionally arresting slow motion that "300" creeps toward nearly 2 hours.

The film is based on the Battle of Thermopylae, where in 480 B.C., 300 Spartans and several hundred other Greeks staged the equivalent of a steel-cage smackdown against hundreds of thousands (some accounts go as high as 2 million) of invading Persians.

The film is both beautiful to look at and bombastic tripe to listen to. This is fireside storytelling, with much thundering oration and as much legitimacy as Paul Bunyan trotting about with a baby blue ox. But for a very specific segment of the moviegoing population (mostly young adult males reliving the imagination of their geeky junior high days), "300" is pure gold. It's often gorgeous (the stylized scenery sizzles with unnatural beauty), thrilling in the intensity of hand-to-hand combat, and ultra-committed to the idea of the comic book as art.

Gerard Butler stars as Sparta's gung-ho leader, King Leonidas, who leads a small band of similarly blood-lusting countrymen intending to stop the massive Persian invasion by blocking a very narrow path to the often raging Aegean Sea.

Rendered mostly in sepia tones and exploding splotches of battle-induced red blood, "300" is extraordinary in its visuals. Nearly the entire film was shot in a studio with actors in front of a blue screen, allowing director Zack Snyder (the "Dawn of the Dead" remake) to stylize most of the computer-generated background and bathe it in perfect sunsets or moonlight.

Butler and his co-stars were also required to undergo extensive physical training, resulting in imposing body sculpting and a sea of impressive six-packs.

In other words, "300" is extreme on every level. It imagines strange beings — a kind of pig man with blades for arms and toady oracle devotees who insidiously lick scantily clad vestal virgins. It presents bottomless pits, a hunchback uglier than the Elephant Man, and the evil invasion leader Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) as a kind of giant she-he cross between a bald, chain-wearing Grace Jones and "Stargate's" Jaye Davidson.

Butler, naturally, booms his dialogue. And the Scottish actor is perhaps the only Greek you'll ever hear shouting in a distinctive brogue.

Call "300" the New Age sword-and-sandal epic — a "Hercules" movie for the computer age.

It's bombastic, overdone, ripe, obvious and a near-perfect video game.

The only thing it's missing: a joystick for every moviegoer.