Culture

Rating: B-

To me, a movie about a devastating volcanic eruption that engulfed an ancient Roman society sounds like a big enough event to encapsulate a 90-minute epic. Unfortunately, director Paul W.S. Anderson disagreed with me, opting instead to jam in the plots of three or four other movies around this event for good measure.

For those unaware, there was indeed a volcanic eruption from Mount Vesuvius in the year 79 A.D. that destroyed the neighbouring Roman city of Pompeii. Anderson’s Pompeii tells the story of the days leading up to the disaster through the eyes of young Scotsman Milo, played by Kit Harrington (Jon Snow of Game of Thrones), who is an enslaved Gladiator. The film opens with Romans raiding his village of Scottish horse warriors in the Highlands. The three story elements of Pompeii are all unapologetic carbon copies of film plots from Volcano, Gladiator and Braveheart respectively. This is made even worse by the cheesy Romeo and Juliet-esque narrative that arises from our heroes’ romantic entanglement with the local politician’s daughter. Needless to say, Pompeii has nothing original to offer.

What it does have to offer, however, are some interesting character performances and kickass action scenes.

The aforementioned character performances come mostly from Keifer Sutherland as a visiting Roman Senator. His stylised performances reminded me of many we saw from early films about Ancient worlds, such as Ben Hur. The rest of the cast did a commendable job as they managed to deliver their lines with some authenticity despite the cut and paste nature of the script.

If nothing else can be said for this movie, in the very least it acts as an interesting recreation of the eruption of Vesuvius itself. I’m no geologist, but the events surrounding the eruption seemed reasonably authentic and were often awe-inspiring in their scale and destructive power.

I couldn’t help but wish that Anderson had spent a little less time creating a forgettable, and stolen, narrative and instead focused on the reason people will go to see this film. Just give us more volcanic eruptions! Jeez, it’s not that hard.