Pompeii Movie Review

“I’m the king of the wor- OMG! Lava!”

I remember when I was a child in school – probably somewhere around the 3rd Grade – when the subject of Pompeii came up. I was amazed, and more than a little terrified, at the idea of a city being destroyed by a volcano. It didn’t seem possible to me. I mean, an entire Roman city? Tens of thousands of people? All gone in a matter of hours? How could that happen? Surely it had to be the act of an angry god. Only something as powerful as that could cause so much destruction and loss of life.

Sadly, being an adult, I know full well just how destructive Mother Nature can be. Volcanos, earthquakes, typhoons, monsoons, and more wreak havoc on the world on a nearly daily basis. You don’t need a god’s wrath when you have miles of magma just waiting to burst up and destroy everything around it. But, does that understanding make what happened to that long ago city any less incredible or horrifying? No. It makes it more so, because it can happen anywhere at anytime, and what befell those ancient people could befall us too.

Luckily for me, the destruction I witnessed in my local theater today was of the CGI variety.

Pompeii, directed by Paul W.S. Anderson and starring Kit Harrington, Emily Browning, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, and Kiefer Sutherland, is the latest “disaster movie” to hit the silver screen. It could be easily described as Titanic meets Gladiator, and really that covers nearly all the relevant bases, but I’m not a fan of reductionism, so I’ll give you a bit more than that.

Starting ten years before the historic eruption of Mount Vesuvius, we see a young Celtic boy witness the death of his parents and tribe at the command of a Roman named Corvis. Adding insult to injury, the boy is soon after captured by slavers. A decade later that boy is a man they call The Celt, and he is a fierce gladiator in a small arena in a city that will one day be called London. His prowess brings him to the attention of a wealthy slaver from Pompeii who thinks The Celt would do well in his city’s gladiator arena. And with that we are whisked off to beautiful Italy, trading the rainy weather of Londinium for the balmy brightness of Pompeii, a beautiful city by the sea that also just happens to sit next to a huge volcano.

Into our story arrives Emily Browning as Cassia, the beautiful daughter of a nobleman, and Corvis, who is now a Roman Senator with plans not just for Cassia, but for Pompeii as well. We also meet Bridgageous, the most feared gladiator in the arena, played by Mr. Eko – I mean, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje.

What follows is your standard sword and sandal movie – youngsters who shouldn’t fall in love do, enemies become friends, vengeance is demanded, people are betrayed, etc. Were it not for the ticking clock we the audience know exists there really wouldn’t be much compelling drama to be had that can’t be found better elsewhere. But there is a clock, and when it goes off it’ll do so with a boom.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where this film’s greatest failure lies. Mount Vesuvius just doesn’t impress. We go to disaster movies because we want to be put right in the middle of a cataclysm, yet save for a few street scenes we’re too far removed for the spectacle to work, and what spectacle we do get seems tame compared to what really happened. When Vesuvius erupted it sent a cloud of ash and smoke 20 miles into the air, and the thermal energy unleashed was more than one-hundred-thousand times that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Damn! But is that what we get on screen? Maybe the filmmakers tried, but I sure didn’t feel it. And what about the build-up to the eruption? Shouldn’t we get a lot of short scenes where lakes boil, vents shoot out gas, maybe some poor shepherd takes his flock too high and stares in terror at the lava-filled caldera before a tremor knocks him and his sheep to their doom? Maybe even a little look beneath the crust as the Earth’s heart surges? Yeah, that’d be great! But we don’t get it. There is only one small “uh oh, something bad is about to happen” scene, and that’s about it. So in this disaster movie we get little foreplay and no satisfying big bang. Is there anything that makes the movie worthwhile?

Yes. Kit Harrington and Emily Browning are the emotional center of this film, and both of them do a pretty good job of making us care. Harrington – already a favorite of this reviewer because of his work on HBO’s magnificent series Game Of Thrones – is a dashing hero. He isn’t burdened with too many lines, but the few he has he gives with good intensity. Most of his time is spent swinging a sword, a task he is very well suited for. Browning also does well, her large eyes constantly pouring out love and fear. A special standout is Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, who owns the screen whenever he’s on it, a mountain of a man with a deadly arm and a heart of gold. The only real acting flop is Kiefer Sutherland. Playing a corrupt Roman senator is probably every actor’s dream, their moment to chew on the scenery and twirl their mustache, but Sutherland just doesn’t commit to his villainy until it’s too late. His worst sin, however, is his voice. For some reason he decided to give himself a slight lisp. Maybe he thought that would add character, but all it really did was make him sound silly. Jack Bauer would laugh as he shot Corvis in the face.

And thus we come to the end of our review. Is Pompeii worth a see? Ultimately yes. Despite its failings, Pompeii does have moments of good fun and the occasional spectacle. I don’t know if its lack of pop will be worsened by a small screen at home, so if you do want to see it you’re most likely better off seeing it in a theater. I’m sure the movie will get buried by a ton of bad reviews just as the real city was entombed under ash and debris, but I have a soft spot for these sorts of films, so I’m inclined to be forgiving. I also want to see Harrington get more roles in better films. If anyone deserves to survive this, it’s him. Maybe next time he’ll get a more competent director with a bigger budget.

 

If $10 is the full price of admission, this one is worth $6.50

Justin Macumber
The Hollywood Outsider
www.TheHollywoodOutsider.com

Justin Macumber
The Hollywood Outsider
www.TheHollywoodOutsider.com