Pompeii

As a love story, Pompeii had very little effect on me, mainly because I didn't care about the characters inhabiting the story.  As a disaster spectacle, the movie works a little bit better, especially during the last half hour, when we finally get to see what we paid for - Vesuvius erupting upon the doomed city.  The film's obvious story inspiration is James Cameron's Titanic, in how it takes a historical disaster, and builds it around a love story between a poor man who has nothing, and a wealthy woman who has everything, except love and happiness.  However, unlike Jack and Rose, the young lovers in this story barely get to spend any screen time together, so it's kind of hard to get behind them.

The weak love story may have to do with the fact that the director is Paul W.S. Anderson, the man best known for the Resident Evil film franchise, as well as Alien vs. Predator.  Just by knowing his past work, you can tell that his interest lies in the destruction and the special effects, and not the characters.  With this knowledge, is it really any surprise that the movie finally takes off when the volcano blows its top?  Anderson makes sure that we can glimpse the soon-to-be-erupting mountain in just about every shot.  It's like he's anticipating it as much as we are.  We get a lot of ominous warnings, and close up shots of the land and city walls as they start to rumble and shake - early signs of what's to come.  When Vesuvius finally does go off, it's an impressive sight, as long as you're watching the film in 2D.  With its dark colors, falling ash and flames, the optional 3D version ends up looking kind of muddy and washed out.  See the movie in 2D if you can, so you can truly admire the effects of the last half.

What happens before the destruction centers around a young slave and gladiator named Milo (Kit Harrington), who witnessed his entire people get slaughtered by the Roman army when he was a child, and now seeks vengeance as he fights his way to the top of the gladiator circuit.  That's pretty much all you need to know about our young hero, other than the fact that he pines for the lovely Cassia (Emily Browning), a noblewoman who shares Milo's love of horses.  It turns out she is engaged to be married to the cruel and ever-sneering Roman Senator Corvus (an over the top Kiefer Sutherland), whom she has no interest in, and is the very man who ordered Milo's people to be killed.  Milo also bonds with another fighter named Atticus (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), who is one battle away from becoming a free man.  If you need another sign that this movie is not really interested in the love story between Milo and Cassia, all you need to do is look at the fact that he spends more time with Atticus. 

I'd wager to guess that the characters of Milo and Cassia spend maybe a grand total of 10 minutes together, and most of that time is spent talking about horses.  Not exactly a love for the ages, you have to admit.  Naturally, this means that there's just not a lot to grab our attention before the city of Pompeii goes up in flames and ash.  The stuff about Milo being a gladiator and forced to fight for the amusement of the nobles doesn't have as much weight as you would expect, and while the battles are shot well enough, they're nothing we haven't seen before, and are completely bloodless in order to secure that PG-13 rating.  This was a movie that was obviously shot to be an R, and you can tell from the rapid editing and quick cuts during a lot of the more violent sequences.  The fights were obviously thrown in to break up the monotony of waiting for the volcano to explode, but it's just not enough.

Really, the one thing that did hold my attention before the spectacle began was the off the wall performance by Kiefer Sutherland.  Speaking with a bizarre accent, and hissing his lines through clenched teeth, Sutherland plays his character like he thinks he's a villain in a kid's movie.  He overacts, his sneer hardly ever leaves his face, and he really plays up the slimy aspect of the character, as if he somehow thinks if he doesn't, we won't get the idea that he's supposed to be the bad guy.  The best performance in the film belongs to Adwale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, who brings a small amount of humor and personality to his performance.  That's more than can be said for the young leads, Kit Harrington and Emily Browning, who both look attractive, but apparently left their personalities behind on the set.  Not only is their relationship shortchanged, they generally don't act all that interested in each other.

Pompeii follows the familiar formula of past disaster movies, but has not learned from the films it desperately wants to imitate.  It takes so much more than destruction to sell a movie like this, you also have to give a darn about the people, and feel something when you realize that there is no hope for any of them.  We don't get that here.  When the destruction is over, and we're looking at the aftermath while sad Enya-style music plays on the soundtrack, the images we see don't really mean anything.  That's the last thing I expected.

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