Pompeii review

                   As “Pompeii” reached its emotional climax, in which I could not have been further removed from or uninspired by, I was startled to hear the enraptured roar of applause from the rows of theater seats behind me just as the credits began to roll.  With that, it’s quite apparent that this sappy, melodramatic, disaster movie masquerading as a classical epic, worked on somebody, and possibly even a few of you, but it is my conviction to inform you, not only as a newspaper critic but as a general public servant, that this movie is depressingly lousy. 

                As a film by Paul W.S. Anderson--of “Resident Evil” (1-5) and “Alien Vs. Predator” fame—“Pompeii” sees the often underachieving shlockmeister attempting a new form of pulp: the historical costume drama, as reimagined by Irwin Allen with a head injury.  To his credit, with this film he tries something new, but, as is the consistent tradition of Paul W.S. Anderson, he fails in the most tedious and predictable ways.

                “Game of Thrones” actor Kit Harrington plays Milo, a survived child slave of the Roman Empire, whose entire Celtic tribe was decimated by a military force, led by the pompous fop Emperor Corvus (Keifer Sutherland). Some decade or so later, Milo is moved to a newly established Roman front in Pompeii, where he forced to fight in gladiatorial battles against his fellow servants, including his new slave-friend Atticus (Adewale-Akinnouye-Agbaje).  There he falls in love with the city’s stubborn princess Cassia (Emily Browning), who has spent some amount of her life trying to escape the lustful gaze of Corvus. Cassia’s royal parents (Cary Anne Moss and Jarred Harris) are in the middle of negotiations with the sniveling emperor, as they plan to unite their city with Rome as a kind of tourist attraction for the wealthy.

                In the midst of all this political tension, romantic horse riding and swords-and-sandals violence, Vesuvius, the famed volcano of Pompeii, erupts, at which point the movie devolves into repetitive scenes of our young lovers running from special effects and getting blocked in corridors by walls of badly-rendered, digital fire balls and pop-out 3D lava.

                It’s not so much that this movie sucks—even though it very much does--it’s that there’s no discernible reason for its existence.  As a ‘serious’ piece of drama the movie is woefully low-rent and most of its key plot points are obviously lifted from its genre predecessors like “Gladiator” and “Spartacus, with more than a dash of “Titanic” in there as well. As an action movie the scenes of hand-to-hand combat are lazily cobbled together from multiple takes, breaking up each beat of each fight into split-second cuts, neutering the visual stakes with muddled close-ups. And finally, all of the fakey volcano stuff undercuts every single reused narrative device the movie begrudgingly spent the first two thirds of its running time putting into place.
                As with all of Anderson’s ‘work’,  I conjure the image of an obnoxious child stacking his wobbly blocks as tall as he can, just before  knocking them all over and giggling hysterically. In this, capable actors like Carry Anne Moss and Jarred Harris give lifeless performances, as if their agents are just out of frame dangling their contracts above the flame of their lighters.  Keifer Sutherland, on the other hand, had apparently just walked out of production of “The Importance of Being Ernest” and forgot to retune his accent accordingly.

                I can tell you with ease to never waste your time with this fast-food, late-winter programmer, but I have a feeling like Red Box will be very good to this movie. And if that’s the case, then so be it. Without the advantage of theater-grade 3D, “Pompeii” will reveal itself for what it truly is; a classless mish-mash of poorly shot, embarrassingly acted, unoriginal, nonsensical junk.

Grade: D –

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/March-2014