BlazeLime Strong and Moving!

ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Senteur As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

brndshoun I watched this for Kit Harrington. To see him in something else besides GOT. Well, at least he knew something. But there are so many stereotypes. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back, boy kisses girl, they both die. Atticus dying "I die free", shades of STARGATE and nobody gets out alive!

Rob-o My wife turned this movie on last week when it was playing on the Syfy channel. When I came into the room where my wife was watching, I did a double-take because my wife doesn't really watch the Syfy channel that much. I was like, "Syfy....whaaat??" It turns out my bride was watching Pompeii, and she was steaming angry. The movie was scheduled to run from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM on the Syfy channel, and my wife was mad that it was already 2:04 PM and the stupid volcano had not erupted yet. Instead there was a ridiculous gladiator scene going on the screen to amuse the "Roman Senator" Kiefer Sutherland (side note: when I saw Kiefer Sutherland, I was like "Kiefer Sutherland....whaaat?"). The clock hit 2:15 PM, and my wife's blood lust for death by volcano had still not been satisfied. Finally, the volcano blew at 2:24 PM, giving us viewers only 36 minutes (including commercials) to revel in the mass destruction and death caused by Vesuvius. One of the first casualties of the volcano was Carrie-Anne Moss, who was also inexplicably in this film. I think I heard Carrie-Anne Moss say one sentence from the time I started watching at 2:04 PM and the time she died 25 minutes later. Later, Carrie-Anne Moss! I think my wife's anger slowly faded as more and more people were murdered by that evil volcano. She probably would have enjoyed the volcano blowing during the opening credits, but I guess there had to be some kind of love story that included Kiefer Sutherland woven in. I actually think it would be fun to see a movie where the volcano exploded during the opening credits and, as soon as the opening credits ended, the closing credits began rolling because everybody died during the opening credits. A movie like that would free up more time for me to watch other movies. And being able to watch other movies is the main reason why I watch movies in the first place.

Screen_Blitz Pompeii is just another one of your average swords-and-sandals adventure. But is the difference here? There is a giant volcano that plays a vital role in the story. That is because this film is inspired by the final days of the historical Roman city Pompeii before it was gravely devastated by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. This bombastic blend of romance, disaster, and gladiator battles is helmed by director Paul W. S. Anderson following his financial success of the 'Resident Evil' series. It is a fantastic treat from visual standpoint. But from a writing standpoint, it is a hot mess. Lacking in originality and crippled by a charmless script, this historical fails to scale the heights above a dumb popcorn flick, and settles for an unremarkable hack-and-slash adventure that only accounts for half of the excitement it is intended to be. In short, it stands as just another one of your noisy guilty pleasure actioners. Set in 79 A.D., this film centers on Milo (played by Kit Harrington), a Roman slave scarred by the slaying of his mother as a young boy, who escapes from slavery to compete in the gladiator wars in the city of Pompeii, pitted along side fellow Roman slave Atticus (played by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) who's intent on killing him to garner his freedom. Upon his escape, he meets the eyes of the beautiful Cassia (played by Emily Browning) who is sadly set to marry the ruthless Roman Senator Corvus (played by Kiefer Sutherland), the man responsible for his mother's death. When the towering Mount Vesuvius erupts with no warning, the entire city of Pompeii is plunged into wide scale chaos. In the amidst of escaping through the shower volcanic fireballs, Milo must race to find Cassia who is trapped inside the debris before it is too late.If you picture Ridley Scott's 'Gladiator' and fuse it with a disaster flick such as 'Volcano' or 'Dante's Peak', that is an accurate portrait of this historical epic is. If there is anything missing, it maybe just a pinch of 'Titanic' in the mix. After all, this movie does follow a love story in the amidst of an impending doom. But the ultimate question is: Is this movie exciting? For a disaster flick, it has its moments of excitement, most of which are granted in the final third during the volcanic eruption. But that is before the hour mark when the movie spends its time introducing the characters and treating us to a series of intense, but lousily edited gladiator battles. Anderson exhibits these sequences using an unfavorable gimmick involving quick cuts in which he cuts the camera nearly every time someone is slashed and beaten with a sword or some bladed weapon. Whether or not the reason behind this is to shield the graphic details to score a PG-13 rating, it tears away the excitement. The real excitement does not begin until the eruption of Mount Vesuvius which marks the film's climax. Anderson greatly composites this sequence with a prolonged string of CGI explosions and flashy special effects that effectively stage the harrowing destruction of the Ancient city. The body count is enormously high, and the special effects bring a helping hand to showcasing the grim atmosphere of this horrifying disaster. Sadly, this is about the only chunk of compulsion Anderson has to offer here. The movie is sorely depraved of decent performances from its cast. This includes Kit Harrington who's brought great appeal as Jon Snow in the TV series 'Game of Thrones', but here his performance is rather stoic. The worst can certainly be said for Kiefer Sutherland who neglects an authentic portrayal of a ruthless Roman senator and instead settles for a hammy performance that comes off more comical than realistic. While it is definitely unreasonable to anticipate something like Joaquin Phoenix's performance in 'Gladiator', Sutherland should been much better than what he delivers here.Pompeii is a bombastic blend of romance, disaster, and gladiator battles that falls short of flair and compulsion, and fails to level up to anything above a surface level popcorn actioner. There is some excitement to be experience here, but unfortunately it all comes in small separate chunks. There is a big, loud volcanic eruption here, but the movie itself is certainly no eruption itself.

Warge Pompeii is probably the one city of the ancient Roman era we know the most about thanks to the fact that the eruption froze the city in time - we know what people talked about, what they worked with, what their concerns were.And yet, the one movie about the destruction of Pompeii unfortunately focuses more on a gladiator than any one else in the city. And that is so unfortunate, since with Spartacus, Gladiator and a few other features, it seems Hollywood has locked itself up with a gladiator that refuses to let them out. So instead of a movie about the actual retired Syrian marine (for example) who worked as a bronze maker and his day to day, we get another hack n' slash. it's lazy, but even worse it's plain cowardice, that Hollywood couldn't make this movie more about the actual people of Pompeii.So it was a disappointment from a script perspective, but the historical accuracy also left a lot to be desired, and the CGI was... abysmal. I'm not one who really notices matte paintings that much in movies, but here it was painfully obvious, and all the damn time.So all in all, what I thought would be a disaster movie set in history, just turned out to be something that should not have been made.Watch Gladiator, Rome or Spartacus instead. It's not about an exploding mountain, but their production values are way higher.