Review: Pompeii

Kit Harrington plays Milo, captured by the Romans in 79AD and as a slave, is forced to compete in the gladiatorial arena. He falls for Cassia (Emily Browning), betrothed to the ruthless Roman Corvus (Kiefer Sutherland). All three find themselves in Pompeii (which Corvus is interested in taking over) for a typical gladiatorial spectacle, but the city of Pompeii seems doomed to meet an Earth-shattering fate. Literally. Did I mention that Corvus is the meanie who wiped out Milo’s family when the latter was a kid? Well, he did (Or at least his henchman did, on Corvus’ orders). Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje plays Milo’s African gladiator buddy Atticus (!), whilst Carrie-Anne Moss and Jared Harris play Cassia’s parents, rulers of Pompeii who are nonetheless too weakly positioned to stand up to Corvus.

 

If this 2014 film from director Paul W. S. Anderson (whose “Resident Evil” and “Death Race” were a tad underrated, but whose “Three Musketeers” got what it deserved) wasn’t so concerned with ripping off other films and stopped trying to tell someone else’s story, we might’ve had something here. The big moment, when it comes, is a lot of schlocky fun. The climax is clearly the best thing in the entire film, and the closest this film gets to telling its own damn story, albeit with a small helping of Irwin Allen disaster movie schlock. It’s enough to keep the film ever so slightly out of the below par range, and slightly in the mediocre range. The rest is a fairly lifeless, unexciting hodgepodge of “Gladiator” (which itself ripped off “Spartacus” at times), “A Knight’s Tale”, and TV’s “Game of Thrones”, with that show’s co-star Kit Harington moping his way through the film unimpressively as a combo of Jon Snow and “Spartacus” as filtered through the late Heath Ledger.

 

Even if the film were meant to be a full-on traditional Roman epic from start to finish without that fiery climax, it’s still so uninspiring and plagiaristic that it constantly reminds you that this sort of thing was done so much better in the 50s and 60s. But the story of Pompeii is indeed meant to be a bit different from your “Fall of the Roman Empire”, “Ben-Hur”, or “Spartacus” films, so it’s distressingly disappointing that Anderson and his team of (way too many) screenwriters are so hell-bent on making it all look so samey (and do a poor, cut-rate job of it) so that when we get to that big disaster movie difference…one no longer really cares.

 

As I said, Kit Harington doesn’t cut it as a leading man here. He only plays one note, the sullen black sheep (or in this case, orphan) determined to prove himself, which served him well enough on “Game of Thrones”. Here? It gets old fast. He’s boring and unpersuasive. Aussie actress Emily Browning is no better. Her one facial expression is ‘duck face’, making her look an awful lot like an underfed Gemma Arterton who just realised she forgot to eat this morning before the camera started rolling. A flagrantly miscast Kiefer Sutherland as the villain doesn’t help, either. He’s really not comfortable doing this kind of thing, and all he offers is an impressively imperious sneer. That’s not nearly enough, he’s generic at best, and I expect more from an actor of his calibre. The pathetic waste of Jared Harris as Browning’s father just points to the fact that the very eyebrow-arching, Claude Rains-esque Harris ought to have played the villain. Hell, Kiefer’s dad Donald could even show him how it’s done (Then again, Donald has been unimpressive in the “Hunger Games” films). Kiefer’s just not a period piece kinda guy, and that’s fine (He made a damn underrated Athos in “The Three Musketeers”, mind you). The only one here who manages to inject any life or interest is the perfectly solid Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, and unfortunately he’s playing a horrible ethnic stereotype. He’s got the Woody Strode/Djimon Hounsou role of the African slave/gladiator. Named Atticus, I shit you not. See, ‘coz he’s black. Get it? Oh go read a book, people (No, not “Go Set a Watchman”, that piece of crap should never have been released and I’m still not 100% convinced Harper Lee wrote all of it herself. Read “To Kill a Mockingbird”. Good film, great book). One of these days someone is going to make one of these Ancient Rome films from the POV of the African slave, who otherwise has played a minor role in such tales. Seriously, it’s begging to be done. Until then, we get the standard ‘doomed black sidekick’ character, and although he clearly steals the film with his badass demeanour, ‘Triple A’ isn’t in the film anywhere near as much as you’d like and can’t save the film on his own.

 

The gladiator action is, like the film as a whole, well-shot, but sadly too bloodless to resonate. It’s a good-looking film with nice scenery and production design. The music score by Clinton Shorter (“District 9”, “Contraband”, “2 Guns”) is perfectly solid too. However, these are prerequisites, you expect a film of this nature (even one with a disaster movie bent that this one is supposed to have) to get those things right.

 

A flat and mostly boring film up until the volcanic finale, which frankly isn’t worth the endurance test. It’s nondescript, when it actually had a chance to stand out from the crowd. A film about an impending volcanic eruption shouldn’t be this lethargic, and should be a lot more fun. Mr. Harington, at least at this stage in his career, clearly can’t carry a film on his own, especially not when he’s given such a Herculean task as trying to save this mediocre effort. Damn good finale, though. Not good enough, Mr. Anderson, not good enough in the slightest (Is it weird to wish this thing were written and directed by Roland Emmerich? Hell, Wolfgang Petersen would’ve at least livened things up). The plagiaristic screenplay is by the team of Janet Scott Batchler and Lee Batchler (the overblown “Batman Forever”, the failed “My Name is Modesty”), Julian Fellowes (“Gosford Park”, “The Young Victoria”, the unfairly maligned “The Tourist”), and Michael Robert Johnson (“Sherlock Holmes”).

 

Rating: C