Leading up to the release of Pompeii, the trailers showed a movie that felt like Gladiator meets a volcano disaster movie
(insert Dante’s Peak or Volcano) with hints of other films in
there as well. After seeing it I can
easily confirm that it is exactly what I had expected, to the point of creating
some boredom induced nausea, the kind that wants to erupt much in the same way
that a digitally animated Mount Vesuvius wants to spew molten death over poor
dialogue and an inanely simple love story.
Luckily for me, I was able to leave the theatre with nothing having
erupted personally, but many aftershocks of cynicism and apathy were
reverberating through my being.
It is not an awful movie.
Not awful to the point of making the audience mad for having their intelligence
insulted (although I imagine there may be some people left feeling that way),
and not horrible to the point of being laughably funny (there were a few
extremely laughable scenes). The problem
with this film was its complete lack of energy and life, as it merely attempted
to simply be a rehashing of stories and characters that we feel like we have
seen many times before. As the movie
rolled out, my companion at the theatre decided to play a game where he would
count the number of original scenes that he saw. I believe that quest was bailed on, as I
asked him how bored he was about halfway through, and he assured me he was not
bored at all as his mind was on other more interesting and important things. Like the poorly digitized bodies in ashes
that bookmark the film (seriously, why could they not have simply built props?)
this movie felt dead and buried to the point being a long and drawn out funeral
service.
Playing the role of the lead was Kit Harrington, who is best
known for his work in the popular series Game
of Thrones. Harrington played a
slave who was an awesome gladiator, probably on account of his ability to
strenuously flex his abdominal muscles in every scene he was in. Harrington’s character was featured in a
scene at the beginning of the movie which reminded me a lot of Conan the Barbarian where his village
was overrun and he witnessed an evil man slay his family. During the battle, he sees a man kicking ass,
and I think we were to believe that witnessing this is what enabled him to
fight later on in life. It may not make
great sense while you read it, but I am simply describing the schlock that was
placed in front of me. He then meets a
prominent lady, played by Emily Browning, and we know that these two hot people
are destined to fall in cliché love before running across the path of a
dastardly volcano.
Everything that unfolds in this film is incredibly
predictable, and it becomes clear as we are introduced to different characters
and see developments happen that we will quickly be able to figure out just
where the story is going. It is not
aided by scenes being completely lifted out of movies, such as scenes from Gladiator (it really liked stealing from
that film), which eventually ground me down to a point of not really caring for
any reason at all and found it hard to focus on viewing it from a critical
standpoint. The dialogue, much like the
acting, is about as childish and basic as it gets, and the decisions of the
characters begin to baffle onlookers who get tired of the fact that people seem
to forget there is a volcano erupting and continually deviate from escaping
with their lives to carry out pointless actions that serve the weak plot.
I won’t put much blame for this on the actors, but more so
on the poor screenplay that was etched by Janet Scott Batchler, Lee Batchler,
and Michael Robert Johnson, which gave
none of the talent anything to really work with. On top of the flaccid story was the
directorial work of Paul W.S. Anderson who enjoys a style over substance approach
to his films, but seems to fall short in both categories from time to
time. In the case of Pompeii, this is one of those
times. Visually it was not a great
movie, except for some of the long distance shots of the exploding mountain
near the end of the film, and there was a great use of lackluster CGI for items
that could have easily been props or models and ended up looking a lot
better. As well, he really wanted these
characters to be as one dimensional as possible, with Harrington only ever
delivering lines and emotions of bravery and never actually acting like a real
person.
It is unfortunate, because I could go on and on, writing at
long lengths different things about this film but it just would not be
appropriate because there are so many other things that are better uses of my
time. I have been putting off this
review for a number of days because I have been completely uninspired by the
film, a movie that is uninspired itself.
It may have the clanging of swords and the ever-so-spectacular moments
of people running away from poor special effects on a blue screen, but it has
little more to add than just that. I was
bored watching it, and I am kind of bored sitting here writing about it.
Rating – 1.5 out of 4 stars
