‘Pompeii’ (2014)

In 79 A.D., Pompeii, a bustling port city, stands in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius. Milo (Kit Harington), a former slave, is a gladiator who has caught the eye of Cassia (Emily Browning), a wealthy merchant's daughter. However, their difference in social status is not the only obstacle to their love; Cassia has been promised to Corvus (Kiefer Sutherland), a corrupt Roman senator. When the eruption of Mount Vesuvius rains lava and ash down on the city, Milo races to save her before it's too late.

My spare time used to consist of reading and pretty much nothing else; depression pretty much killed that (and spare time suddenly became something I didn’t want, but that’s another story) so these days my spare time is still about reading but also loud and brash movies where I don’t have to think too much. Films like ‘Pompeii’ funnily enough. It’s not the review I wanted to kick things off with but it’s the movie that I watched last night (thank you Amazon ‘New and Used’…) so here we are.

I do love a good ‘Sword and Sandals’ epic so thought I couldn’t go too far wrong with ‘Pompeii’ and the promise of a large volcanic eruption destroying an ancient city seemed like a great way to round the day off. My first feeling that something wasn’t quite right was when I tried to watch this a couple of days ago and fell asleep halfway through, and not for the normal reasons around a long day at work either. Last night’s viewing was a little more successful but only really served to highlight what I saw as failings in the film.

Volcanoes erupting and levelling cities, on screen, are cool. Volcanoes erupting and wiping out the villain of the piece (Kiefer Sutherland sounding like he is talking through a mouthful of marbles) is also very satisfying. No matter how large the spectacle though (and it is large, they really did it right), you can’t expect an erupting volcano to carry the film on its own; even in a movie about a famous volcano erupting. No, you need the actors and their story to step up and do their thing as well. It wasn’t for want of trying but it just didn’t happen here. Milo and Cassia’s ‘doomed romance’ just never seemed to click into anything resembling what it wanted to be; as much as I like Kit Harington, smouldering looks are only going to get you so far and he just ended up coming across as a poor man’s Russell Crowe (strangely apt given the revenge theme running through the film but even so…) I’ve already mentioned Kiefer Sutherland’s strange accent but apart from that, he actually came across as villainous in all the right ways and was a good foil for Harington’s Milo.

So what was ‘Pompeii’ to me then? A film with some attention grabbing set pieces, volcano erupting and arena fights, that pretty much overshadow a story so lightweight that it needs medical attention. I’d watch it again, just for Vesuvius erupting but the lack of any real story means that I’m in no big hurry to do this at all.