If "Brokeback Mountain" was the gay "Star Wars," then "300" must be a queer "Christmas Carol" -- if you love watching gorgeous, muscular men run around in tiny leather thongs or less, you'll swear Santa Claus came early this year.

We're not just talking pretty boys here, although every man in "300" is movie-star handsome. They're also the baddest-ass near-naked, body-armor-be-damned fighters since "Fight Club." Each one of the 300 semi-nude warriors from the movie's title fights to the death for Sparta, skewering or decapitating every overdressed Persian soldier he can get his bloody sword on. It's a battle of shirts versus skins, with the gloriously skin-baring, zero-body-fat Greeks taking the day -- in the audience's heart, at least.

"300" is a faithful film adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel of the same name. Miller's comic book is, in turn, a faithful retelling of Herodotus' ancient story of how 300 Spartans challenged the Persian Empire's massive army rather than surrender their freedom. The battle of Thermopylae established the Spartans' fiercely independent, warlike reputation right up to our time.

Just how fierce are the Spartans? One man faces down an enormous black charging horse, hauling back and slicing through its thighs as it flies overhead, splitting it length-wise in midair. Another Spartan takes down a raging rhinoceros-like creature with just his mighty computer-enhanced spear. It's a real rush when the whole phalanx of Spartans raises its giant shields in unison with a boom of thunder, pulls back its iron lances and charges forward. Hordes of Persian soldiers are chopped up in graphic, bloody detail; wounded bodies are strewn about, groaning, until the Spartans can casually finish them off with their spears like wriggling fish at the end of the day's battle.

State-of-the-art visual effects render the mythic story brilliantly. As with last year's adaptation of Frank Miller's "Sin City," director Zack Snyder blends computer fantasy backgrounds with graphically enhanced human actors in sort of a living comic book. Whereas the previous film was done in cool black-and-white, "300" is flooded with Mediterranean shades of pale green, yellow and brown. Combined with those athletic actors, the visual effect is spectacular.

King of the Spartans is Leonidas, buffest of the buff, handsomest of the handsome, played by rising Scottish star Gerard Butler. He's filled out considerably since wooing romance lovers as the hunky, singing "Phantom of the Opera." He's also developed a swagger and sneer that make his King Leonidas a cross between Mel Gibson's "Braveheart" and Russell Crowe's "Gladiator." This proud descendant of Hercules belts out lines like "Spartans do not retreat! Spartans do not surrender!" and "Have a hearty breakfast, for tonight we dine in hell!" Butler earns the title of action hero mightily, although he'd be even more effective if he varied his tone beyond "forceful" and "very forceful" more often.

As physically powerful as Butler's Leonidas is, he draws his deepest strength from supportive, intensely beautiful wife Gorgo (Lena Headey). When King Leonidas waivers, Queen Gorgo imparts her own steely resolve, declaring, "Freedom is not free at all. It is paid for in blood." When Leonidas goes off to war, Gorgo expresses an almost frighteningly stern love: "Come back with your shield, or on it." Queer audiences will recognize Headey as the lesbian florist charmer in last year's romantic comedy "Imagine Me and You." She's easily the best actor in "300," creating an earthily strong regent who would make even Helen Mirren's "Queen" think twice before invading the Greek isles.

Together, Leonidas and Gorgo are magnificent. The night before the battle begins, Leonidas stands nude in the moonlight outside the royal chambers, his impressive 6'2" figure on full blue-tinted display, shapely buns and all. Gorgo calls him inside, and the two make love as a couple should on their last night before a war -- passionately and in every position the filmmaker can imagine. In a movie that's all about carnal prowess, the scene is not gratuitous; it shows what free, gym-toned people are fighting for.

King Leonidas and Queen Gorgo face challengers among their own people as well as from without. The royal couple stands firm against would-be appeasers of the Persian Empire whom they dismiss as cowards -- and you can imagine how Spartan rulers deal with cowards. An exhilarating momentum thus builds both within the Spartan ranks and outside in the "Hot Gates" (the battle zone) toward a truly epic climax. It's a sometimes inspiring, sometimes guilty pleasure to get swept up in Spartan war fever.

Occasionally the testosterone overflows to uncomfortable levels of machismo. Leonidas curses his supposedly wimpy allies in neighboring Athens as "philosophers and boy-lovers." In fact, scholars credit Sparta with initiating the culture of Greek homoeroticism as part of its military indoctrination; Leonidas himself is raised away from home by men, spending a good portion of his adolescence wrestling guys in underwear.

Giant Persian god-king Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) -- Leonidas's nemesis -- is almost a drag-queen parody, severely plucked eyebrows and all. That's not totally unfair, as historians describe the real Xerxes as vain, foolish and really good-looking. Here he's covered in decorative gold chain, from his dangling gold face piercings to a gold mesh bikini that only a true gym god or maybe Sting (remember his metal undies in "Dune"?) could get away with. Brazilian stud Santoro's suave charisma and sculpted abs elevate Xerxes above a swishy punchline. Xerxes' Persian orgy pals come off less glowingly, especially some lascivious lesbian lovers with scarred faces, and whoever invited that goat to the party.

A gladiator film is not about cultural sensitivity, though, or niceties of any kind. It's about ferocious, manmeat-eating fun, and "300" delivers in grand style. Let's all give a virile grunt of "Ahoo!" for new action heroes Gerard Butler, Lena Headey and those mighty Spartans!

by Marc Breindel