Review: Pompeii
Some movies are epic. Some movies are dramatic. And some are just plain ol’ silly. Sadly, Pompeii falls into this last category.
From the outset, its clear that this movie is camp to the point of living in a tent. The characters, especially the two leads, are arch to the point of stereotypical and their dialogue could come from any number of sandal and sword epics. Kit Harington is a Celtic gladiator from the provinces whose family was killed by the Romans, Emily Browning is the girl who impressed by his ‘sword’, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje is the other gladiator, who is gruff but wise and eventually he and the main character become friends and yadda-yadda-yadda. You will be able to tell who is who from the moment they appear on-screen. The true standout is Kiefer Sutherland as the villainous Senator Corvus, whose every line drips with smarmy evil.
Everything this man says is pure gold.
The movie, when not occupied with Ham Acting 101, is chock-full of gladiatorial combat and other assorted violence. Unfortunately it all comes out rather drab and bloodless. The film is obviously straining against its 14A rating, and the result are fights that end up looking rubbery and cartoon-ish. I swear, in one early scene Kit Harington gets decked in the face, and responds like he’s made of rubber. Not that this isn’t entertaining, because it is. It just doesn’t jive with the tone the movie is trying to set.
But of course, you won’t be going to see this movie for any of the above. No, you are going to see it for the mother-loving volcano. Throughout the above rigmarole, the movie will occasionally show us an earthquake or someone falling into a suddenly opening pit, as if to say to the audience I know this is lame, but just wait it gets better. So the real question is: does it?
BRING IT!
Nope. The volcano is a dud. Oh, it looks great, with fire raining impressively from the sky, but it’s here that the movie truly fails, and misses the point of its own genre. Survival and disaster stories are supposed to be about who these people really are when the chips are down. Its not supposed to just change the characters’ circumstances, but change the characters themselves. And not one person in this movie changes. No one is revealed to be unexpectedly brave, or cowardly, or noble. The plot continues as you would expect. We get a flash of character development when the female lead’s father takes the chaos as an opportunity to try to kill the Senator to whom he has been kowtowing to entire movie, but he cocks it up and dies in manner worthy of Calculon. The volcano is another obstacle. Its visually impressive, but means jack squat it terms of the narrative or character development, and thus fails to have any impact on the audience. Its just something that happens.
I could have forgiven the characters, dialogue, and cartoon violence if it had just gotten that right. I could have even forgiven the dark visuals and awful 3D. But it messed up the disaster part of a disaster movie, and what we get is a B-grade gladiator movie only notable for it’s inhuman levels of silliness. If you can see it on the cheap with the right group of friends it can be hoot, but overall you can safely give Pompeii a miss.
