Pompeii (2014)

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

To be fair i would put a 7 for this movie but i really don't understand all the low ratings! And i have watched a lot of crappy movies! Very good visual effects, decent acting, sure it's not the movie of the century but it's enjoyable to watch! An average note of 5.5 isn't fair in my opinion.

Most of the reviews capture the main elements of the movie. If it missed a cliché, I missed the missing of it. Just an example. We know that in slasher movies the supposedly dead villain leaps back to life. The earliest and best example of such an event is from "Wait Until Dark" (1967). Here, one of the more dislikable heavies -- Kiefer Sutherland as the pompous representative of Rome -- gets to pull the stunt twice.There are three blacks in the movie. They're all friends and caretakers of the white people. One by one, they are picked off. Usually the white hero and heroine (Kit Harrington and Emily Browning) get away alive, but in this case everyone perishes, with the two lovers turned into upright statues of ash.Those clumsy looking human forms that we've all seen from Pompeii are interesting. None were upright, of course. Pompeii was buried under thirty feet of ash, left alone for some 1,700 years, until in the early 19th century some of the men wielding shovels found that their shoes sometimes broke through the crust into hollows below. Then archaeologists began to locate the holes and fill them with plaster. But that's neither here nor there. Without giving the matter much if any importance, I picked up scenes (or suggestions of scenes) from "Gladiator," "Spartacus," "Titanic," "The Horse Whisperer". and one or two others I've forgotten.In return for sitting through the formulaic events, you get in return a massive display of visual effects: flaming meteors, boulders falling from the sky, a giant tsunami, fires, earthquakes, landslides, a monstrous pyroclastic flow, and praising the chocolate cake at one of your own restaurants. It's such a shattering experience it will make you think twice. Twice but not three times.Informative datum. Pompeii had a red light district and the cobblestone street was worn down an inch or so by the heavy wagon traffic, like inverted railroad tracks.

Saying that, I didn't particularly fall crazy in love with this film, but I did like it. If you enjoy movies of this type of genre then I say, give it go. Yes, it's titled Pompeii, but don't be fooled into thinking that the movie is based & focuses on Pompeii itself. I do believe that it hardly follows true events of what really happened back when the volcano blew its top, but the storyline they went with & used wasn't that bad.. I thought the special effects did OK & wasn't poorly done & the acting wasn't bad in any way either. I do feel slightly disappointed, they could of really gone to town with the blood, guts & grisly stuff beings as they chose to focus the storyline around fighting, gladiators & more fighting, but the movie lacked any of the sort.

Pompeii is just another one of your average swords-and-sandals adventure. But is the difference here? There is a giant volcano that plays a vital role in the story. That is because this film is inspired by the final days of the historical Roman city Pompeii before it was gravely devastated by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. This bombastic blend of romance, disaster, and gladiator battles is helmed by director Paul W. S. Anderson following his financial success of the 'Resident Evil' series. It is a fantastic treat from visual standpoint. But from a writing standpoint, it is a hot mess. Lacking in originality and crippled by a charmless script, this historical fails to scale the heights above a dumb popcorn flick, and settles for an unremarkable hack-and-slash adventure that only accounts for half of the excitement it is intended to be. In short, it stands as just another one of your noisy guilty pleasure actioners. Set in 79 A.D., this film centers on Milo (played by Kit Harrington), a Roman slave scarred by the slaying of his mother as a young boy, who escapes from slavery to compete in the gladiator wars in the city of Pompeii, pitted along side fellow Roman slave Atticus (played by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) who's intent on killing him to garner his freedom. Upon his escape, he meets the eyes of the beautiful Cassia (played by Emily Browning) who is sadly set to marry the ruthless Roman Senator Corvus (played by Kiefer Sutherland), the man responsible for his mother's death. When the towering Mount Vesuvius erupts with no warning, the entire city of Pompeii is plunged into wide scale chaos. In the amidst of escaping through the shower volcanic fireballs, Milo must race to find Cassia who is trapped inside the debris before it is too late.If you picture Ridley Scott's 'Gladiator' and fuse it with a disaster flick such as 'Volcano' or 'Dante's Peak', that is an accurate portrait of this historical epic is. If there is anything missing, it maybe just a pinch of 'Titanic' in the mix. After all, this movie does follow a love story in the amidst of an impending doom. But the ultimate question is: Is this movie exciting? For a disaster flick, it has its moments of excitement, most of which are granted in the final third during the volcanic eruption. But that is before the hour mark when the movie spends its time introducing the characters and treating us to a series of intense, but lousily edited gladiator battles. Anderson exhibits these sequences using an unfavorable gimmick involving quick cuts in which he cuts the camera nearly every time someone is slashed and beaten with a sword or some bladed weapon. Whether or not the reason behind this is to shield the graphic details to score a PG-13 rating, it tears away the excitement. The real excitement does not begin until the eruption of Mount Vesuvius which marks the film's climax. Anderson greatly composites this sequence with a prolonged string of CGI explosions and flashy special effects that effectively stage the harrowing destruction of the Ancient city. The body count is enormously high, and the special effects bring a helping hand to showcasing the grim atmosphere of this horrifying disaster. Sadly, this is about the only chunk of compulsion Anderson has to offer here. The movie is sorely depraved of decent performances from its cast. This includes Kit Harrington who's brought great appeal as Jon Snow in the TV series 'Game of Thrones', but here his performance is rather stoic. The worst can certainly be said for Kiefer Sutherland who neglects an authentic portrayal of a ruthless Roman senator and instead settles for a hammy performance that comes off more comical than realistic. While it is definitely unreasonable to anticipate something like Joaquin Phoenix's performance in 'Gladiator', Sutherland should been much better than what he delivers here.Pompeii is a bombastic blend of romance, disaster, and gladiator battles that falls short of flair and compulsion, and fails to level up to anything above a surface level popcorn actioner. There is some excitement to be experience here, but unfortunately it all comes in small separate chunks. There is a big, loud volcanic eruption here, but the movie itself is certainly no eruption itself.