FILM REVIEW: POMPEII (12A)

With its love story amidst a disaster angle – it was tagged as being similar to Titanic.

Sadly the only thing it has in relation to that movie is that it sinks too.

This big-budget Gladiator-wannabe spectacle bombed across the pond – making only a meagre $23m on a $100m plus production budget – and it’s not hard to see why with its very TV movie feel. With a few entertaining action set-pieces it’s not the worst film to while away nearly a couple of hours, with Game of Thrones’ Kit Harington proving to be an amiable lead as six-packed slave-turned-gladiator Milo; but sadly his chemistry with fellow warrior Atticus (played by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, best known for playing Mr Eko in TV series Lost) is better than with rich merchant’s daughter Cassia (Sucker Punch’s Emily Browning).

And even though Milo and Cassia have taken a fancy towards one another, she is being forced to marry a corrupt Roman senator (played woefully by a hammed-up Kiefer Sutherland) – who (would you believe it) is the same guy who ordered the butchering of Milo’s family when he was a kid. So as Mount Vesuvius erupts in the background – which causes the magnificent Pompeii to crumble in this 79AD-set adventure – Milo faces a race against time to save his new love before all the city’s inhabitants perish. Sadly for a film that so badly wants to be a glorious blockbuster, it’s poorly executed special effects and lack of anything approaching a decent script, really ruins what potentially could have flowed so much better.

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Gavin Miller

Cast: Kit Harington, Emily Browning, Kiefer Sutherland, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Carrie-Anne Moss & Jared Harris Running Time: 1hr 45mins Director: Paul WS Anderson [youtube id=”t6TRwfxDICM” width=”600″ height=”350″]