Directed by:
Paul W.S. AndersonCinematography:
Glen MacPhersonComposer:
Clinton ShorterCast:
Kit Harington, Emily Browning, Kiefer Sutherland, Carrie-Anne Moss, Jessica Lucas, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Jared Harris, Currie Graham, Sasha Roiz (more)VOD (3)
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Set in 79 A.D., POMPEII tells the epic story of Milo (Kit Harington), a slave turned invincible gladiator who finds himself in a race against time to save his true love Cassia (Emily Browning), the beautiful daughter of a wealthy merchant who has been unwillingly betrothed to a corrupt Roman Senator. As Mount Vesuvius erupts in a torrent of blazing lava, Milo must fight his way out of the arena in order to save his beloved as the once magnificent Pompeii crumbles around him. (official distributor synopsis)
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Despite the few flaws it has, I surprisingly enjoyed Pompeii very much. It was pulled up by a very likeable loving duo and impressive visual effects. The pacing is decent, there's something going on from the start, there's no shortage of fights that suffer from a lack of blood but still kept me interested and mayhem in the final 40 minutes was very well done by Paul W.S. Anderson. 70%.
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Pompeii is exactly that kind of movie about which I’ve read bunch of opinions from the self-proclaimed experts that the movie is going to suck before it was even released. It is created by Paul W. S. Anderson and he has never shot a good movie. The local reviewers and know-it-all experts had a clear opinion even before they watched the movie. What else should I expect? For a change, I kept my mouth shut and waited until I actually saw the movie. And I have to say I was surprised by decent filmmaking, which was however not set in the ancient Rome, but in the ancient Rome modified by the Americans. But I can get over that. I liked the actors, I liked the story and most of all I liked the second half of the film, which turned the locations into an absolute hell. So I can’t really find any flaws with Anderson’s work – this is just exactly what I was expecting from him and what I also truly enjoyed.
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The main and practically only unusual thing about Pompeii is the effort combine disaster-flick spectacle with antiquity action. The two types of film are melded together through the clever use of melodramatic conventions, as the essence of the genre calls for the extinction of both the gladiator and the individual facing the wrath of nature. Roughly half of the film consists in setting up the narrative background required for the individualistic hero’s effective engagement with external events and it is exceedingly obvious that Anderson does not enjoy directing actors (if anyone is interested how Kit Harington performs, he performs exactly as he does in Game of Thrones). Thanks to this basic arrangement of relationships and motifs, on the other hand, Anderson is able to engage in PG-13 fight scenes and spectacular Emmerich-esque destruction until the end. It’s a satisfactory spectacle, but it’s nothing special even in 3D, which only really works when the action takes place on multiple levels (roughly one or two scenes). The action scenes are muddled due to the quick editing and off-centre compositions (the characters nonsensically fight at the edge of screen multiple times). In addition to that, they are much more grounded and with less video-game stylisation that you would expect from the director of Mortal Kombat, multiple instalments of the Resident Evil franchise and Death Race. The games resemble “bird's-eye-view” shots of the city (as from an RTS), whose main purpose is to prepare us for the aforementioned combining of genres, i.e. for the biblical scale of the impending devastation. The religious subtext or, more precisely, the use of the principle of divine justice is the only instance of reviving the popular leftist story of a man of the people who stands up to a powerful empire personified by a greedy senator (Kiefer Sutherland delivers the only – and probably unintentionally – funny line in the entire film). Pompeii isn’t as blatantly stupid as Need for Speed; I’d even venture to say that it contains a small amount of historical truth, but as with Need for Speed, you will likely walk out of the cinema unsatisfied if you don’t appreciate how exemplarily it fills out the classic Hollywood narrative template and genre formulas. 65%
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Although Paul W.S. Anderson has made a number of downright stupid films so far, most of them have at least entertained me in some way. Not Pompeii, though. The wait for the special effects frothing was extremely long, and when I got it, I felt that it should end again. I wasn't impressed with the central duo either, but Kiefer Sutherland was clearly having a good time. At least someone was, right?
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I saw Hercules: The Legend Begins on the same day, and even though it's quite ridiculous, Hercules entertained me a bit more. Not by much, but still, one expected nothing and got nothing. In the case of Pompeii, the expectations may have been a little higher, but their fulfillment was not. A stupid romance bolted onto a disaster. Even if it is not in connection with a historical event, the effect will be the same. Only the explosion of Vesuvius is worth it.
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