300 is operatic. Everything about it is grand and ambitious, from the costuming to the music to the acting. It cares more about the telling of the story than the story itself. 300 is not content to be a note-for-note cover song of the original material, like Sin City was. Instead, it takes Frank Miller’s Technicolor rendition of the Spartan stand at Thermopylae and makes the story its own, while remaining true to the themes of the original material. By doing so, 300 becomes that rarest of adaptations: One superior to its source.

“Style over substance” has been the watchword for many young directors, particularly those remaking or adapting already respected works. Director Zack Snyder himself made his mark with his viscerally thrilling adaptation of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. Too often these adaptations and remakes are empty exercises resembling 90-minute music videos rather than actual films, but here, Snyder and co-writers Kurt Johnstad and Michael B. Gordon have tamed the urge to “look cool” and have created powerful visuals and dynamic action that build the movie’s tone, brick by brick. They have done nothing less than create their own aesthetic.

Xerxes the Great’s massive slave army is marching on Greece. Standing in its way is the city-state of Sparta, a place devoted entirely to the honor, glory, and cultivation of warriors. Sparta’s king, Leonidas (Gerard Butler), is unimpressed. Xerxes’ envoys are thrown into a well, in a typically Spartan turn of diplomacy.

Most of Sparta and the larger Greek council are hesitant to act, especially given the warnings of the Oracle at Delphi. Leonidas is not so patient. He cannot legally amass an army and march to war, so he instead gathers 300 of his best men to march to the ‘Hot Gates’ at Thermopylae, to see what they can see. In modern times, we would call this kind of unsanctioned war-like move a “police action.” It won’t sit well with the rest of the council, but Leonidas know that the time for talking is past. Disaster waits at their doorstep.

If you’re already thinking of all the tiresome, partisan arguments that will be made in the name of this movie, you’re not alone. But never mind. This is not a movie about messages, despite the occasional intrusive monologue about what it means to be free. This is a movie about action and violence as art. The battle scenes, contrary to the modern style of most action sequences (that leave most people asking “what the hell just happened?”), are precise and chaotic without being confusing. Some of the more detailed fights are slowed to give us a full comprehension of what’s happening at every angle; the result borders on performance art.

Indeed, every motion is art in itself. The ecstatic rapture of the Oracle, the arrogant majesty of Xerxes, Stelios’s leap at a Persian slavemaster – Snyder has taken the difficult task of giving motion to still art, and he has done so triumphantly.

The performances, too, are surprisingly strong. They didn’t have to be. Gerard Butler does not simply posture and snarl as Leonidas. He inhabits the role in such a way that we actually believe the near-impossible narration of his birth and rearing; here, truly, is a man who as a young boy killed a wolf in the wild with nothing but his spear. Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) is equally formidable back home, no matter how often she is reminded that she is a woman in a man’s world. And you can almost believe Xerxes is the God-King he claims to be, for his stalking presence as much as his eerie sibilance.

Force of personality drives 300. The characters are titans. The settings are formidable. The dialogue is spare, strong, and spoken with bravura. The music is a brilliant clash of modern and classical sounds. What these elements add up to, what Snyder forges from them, is one of the most striking movie experiences I have had in a long time.