Every once and a while you just want to kick back and watch a good disaster flick. I don’t know what it is about watching chaos unfold on fictional characters, but it provides some wildly entertaining stuff. Hell, Roland Emmerich has paid his rent this way for decades. In these sort of films, you’re not going for Oscar-level performances and it doesn’t have to be the most compelling story. But it has to be just interesting enough so you actually feel somewhat concerned about the characters when they’re running for dear life.
Unfortunately Pompeii is a disaster film that is all for show, in every sense. Director Paul W.S. Anderson (Whose credits include Resident Evil, Alien vs. Predator, Death Race, and The Three Musketeers – yikes) has a good eye for visuals. If there’s one thing Pompeii has going ofr it, it’s that it often looks stunning. Yet, that’s about all it has going for it. From the cinematography to it’s actors, it’s all style, no substance.
In Pompeii we follow the troubled life of Milo (Kit Harrington). As a child, his family was slaughtered by a group of Roman soldiers, led by an evil Senator Corvus (Kiefer Sutherland). Milo survives the attack by pretending to be dead, but he may have been better off dead, as when he is found he is then sold into slavery. Years later we meet an all grown up version of Milo who is now forced to fight as a Gladiator. He is brought to fight in Pompeii, where Corvus and the rest of the same bath of Romans just happen to also be in town.
Milo also just happens to catch the eye of Cassia (Emily Browning) who is the daughter of the city’s ruler Severus (Jared Harris) and his wife, Cassia (Carrie-Anne Moss). You can see where this is headed. Although just meeting long enough to move past the icebreaker stage, the two lovebirds fall deeply in love and want to be together. Naturally, being as beautiful as she is, Corvus also has his eye on her. After discovering she’s “in love” with Milo, Corvus makes it his mission to sabotage Milo.
It’s quite a bit of plot, to the point where about midway through the picture you have to remind yourself that there’s volcano chaos coming at some point. You get hints of it throughout the movie, but it’s not until the last quarter or so that the destruction begins.
Pomepii tries to write a compelling story but for the most part, fails to pull you in. The writing (a script scribed by Janet Scott Batchler, Lee Batchler and Michael Robert Johnson) is typical run of the mill and lackluster. You never become all that attached to the main character, not leaving you too sympathetic for him when the volcano’s hot ash finally does make its untimely arrival. All the other subplots are rushed and ultimately don’t matter when its the volcano’s time to shine.
Kit Harrington is a match made in heaven as Jon Snow on HBO’s Game Of Thrones, but he’s a young actor, and doesn’t quite have the leading man act down quite yet. He and his female co-star are mighty good at looking pretty and starry-eyed, but their dramatic ability isn’t near to their co-star’s. Keifer Sutherland makes a fine villain, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Lost’s Mr. Eko) is rock solid as a fellow Gladiator. It’s always good to see Jared Harris & Carrie-Anne Moss, but they’re drastically underused here.
When Pompeii finally does erupt, it’s too little, too late. It’s entertaining enough to see all the damage it causes, but that’s about it. You’ll see the ending coming a mile away, and that doesn’t help make it any less cheesier. In fact, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (a very underrated movie) had a similar ending, but was much more effective.
Pompeii is fine as a future late night watch on cable, but unless you’re an obsessive Jon Snow fan, you’ll be fine skipping out on this one.
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