Review of Pompeii (2014) by Harry W — 21 Aug 2014

Although not expecting to like Pompeii, I had hoped that there would be some guilty pleasure value in the film as a disaster flick.

Coming around the same time as I, Frankenstein and The Legend of Hercules, Pompeii follows in the footsteps of each film into being an overblown and big-budget sword-and-sandal flick with too much money for it to know what to do with. Similarly, it somehow ends up looing cheap which is surprising considering that in the past Paul W.S. Anderson has been able to create atmospheric production designs which hold a real sense of reality to them. Admittedly, by comparison Pompeii feels a lot more legitimate, but the problem is that the film has no atmosphere to it. It could have been believable with its expensive sets if it were captured in a way which was less conventional than the style that it succumbed to, but it is less reminiscent of historical tales along the lines of Spartacus while more familiar with Ator l'invincibile which I don't need to tell you is a very lackluster sword-and-sandal blunder.

Viewers aren't likely to watch Pompeii for an understanding of what historical relevance the city of Pompeii had, and especially not since the film was directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. It has a plot which is too similar to The Legend of Hercules and a visual style which similarly renders it open to comparison. It is a film about a gladiator in Pompeii, but the only real chance that viewers will sympathise for the gladiator is if they are fans of the work of his actor from Game of Thrones. On the surface, the story of a gladiator combined with a tale of disaster is interesting and it is certainly a more fun idea than trying to build genuine drama out of one dimensional figures that the viewers never had a chance of caring about, but unfortunately Paul W.S. Anderson attempts to do both. He tries to make the shallow and meaningless characters ones that viewers are likely to care about while also having them take on the roles of gladiators to reveal the struggle of the lower class in the contemporary society. It doesn't work because the characters are so damn paper thin so it is of no concern whether they end up living or dying, and instead of focusing on the bigger picture which a good disaster film does and emphasising precisely the scale of the damage and all the ways that the people of Pompeii were built, it becomes too focused on four predominant characters which means that its ambition is way too limited. In terms of storytelling, Pompeii is pretty much as bad as you would expect, but the only thing is that it cries out to have the potential of being a lot more. Sadly, those cries were not heard.

Pompeii is pretty much a standard bad disaster movie. It is standard because it spends too much time attempting and failing to build.

Characters that the audience can care about that by the time the disaster strikes, viewers have already made up their opinion of the feature. There are some decent action scenes in the film, but they feel too conventional to exhilarate viewers and rely too much on generic sound effects to simulate the clash of swords, so there is not much good that builds up to the disaster climax. When it comes, the excitement turns out absent because there is no thrills or explosive fun in Pompeii and the story just feels way too fake. The one thing that I will give praise to is the quality of the depiction of the actual volcanic eruption in the film because while the disaster of the film looked dull and not so impressive for a film which cost a whopping $80 million, the visual depiction of Mount Vesuvius' eruption was exceptionally detailed. This reminds viewers that while the film is flawed, it had a lot of potential. And had it managed to keep the focus of the story more on that than on the pointless characters of the film then it could have ended up being a more entertaining feature. Pompeii is short on disaster and high on failed attempts at drama, but what it really lacks is entertainment value.

The cast in Pompeii manage to falter under the direction as well. You can tell it isn't their fault because the actors are all talented, but unfortunately they are force fed artificial screen lines and paper thin characters which leaves them with little wto work with. Considering that Kit Harrington is the acclaimed actor from the popular television series Game of Thrones, it is clear that he has talent which is not present in Pompeii. He tries half-heartedly and honestly does the best he can do with the part, but it fails to illuminate any of his acting talents. Even Sucker Punch star Emily Browning and 24 lead actor Kiefer Sutherland cannot do anything in their part to make their roles compelling, entertaining or all that necessary to the story. Despite all three actors having natural talents to them, Paulj W.S. Anderson requests none of it in the production of Pompeii because while he obsesses over characters, he fails to realise what makes them important and therefore the actors do not know where to go with them.

The only cast member that is really any good is Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje because while his part is cheap, he at least manages to make a determined archetype out of the part along the lines of talented actor Djimon Hounsou, albeit to a largely lesser extent. Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje does his part in the film and manages to use heroic charisma to make a character who is the closest thing to compelling that Pompeii will ever get, and so really he serves as a genial presence in the film.

So while it comes to me as no surprise, Pompeii is a dull, slow, shallow and boring disaster film which takes itself too seriously as a drama and does not have the sense to focus on being a guilty pleasure.