Pompeii

From the director who brought audiences Resident Evil and Alien vs Predator comes a disaster-spectacle... Wait a minute; that sounds like a possible trailer for the movie. The director's track record certainly doesn't inspire confidence and for good reason; Pompeii IS one more disaster in his oeurve and one probably more catastrophic than the Vesuvius eruption of 79 A.D. Starring a patchwork cast of Kit Harrington (Game of Thrones), Kiefer Sutherland, Carrie-Anne Moss, Emily Browning (Sucker Punch) and Jared Harris, Pompeii should be a late-night offering on the History Channel rather than movie-house fare. The story asks us to believe a Celtic survivor of a Roman massacre in ancient Britain would find himself in Pompeii years later; doomed to fight in a gladitorial arena. Overlooking this implausibility, he befriends a fellow gladiator and through a chance encounter with the daughter of a wealthy and powerful Pompeiian, falls in love. I don't have a problem with such a development; as recent reading of a terrific book on gladiators by the Roman historian Philip Matyszak attests to the possibility of such a union in ancient Rome. I do have a problem with the tsunami of cliches the movie traffics in, such as a white gladiator befriending fellow arena fighter of African descent. Seems whenever we see any Hollywood gladitorial production, a multi-cultural union of this ilk is involved. This can be traced to Spartacus, where Kirk Douglas and Woody Strode played the archetypal pairing. If Pompeii was hoping to make a Spartacus-like socio-political statement, it fails miserably. We know freedom is one theme, made manifest in the African's death scene, in which he raises a Black Panther-like fist; declaring his freedom as the ash and lava bury him. But the hero, played with little or no inner-rage by Harrington, isn't concerned with freedom but vengeance for the butchery of his family he witnessed as a child at the hands of Roman soldier, now Senator Kiefer Sutherland. That the two would find themselves face to face again years later is too much to swallow. The film follows a predictable course to several showdowns and the inevitable destruction of Pompeii; not a moment of surprise in between. Sutherland doesn't make us believe for a moment he is plausibly Roman or a senator; he just seems like a vexing pest with a 21st century haircut. Of course the script doesn't help, as the clunky dialogue is tired and tiresome to hear. Everyone is who they seem; noone deceives the audience for a moment with ulterior motives or agendas. It is also ludicrous for characters to settle scores as apocalyptic destruction reign downs on them. The hero and his African friend choose to face-down the Senator and his lackey in the arena when death-by-volcano seems imminent. And would anyone really go looking for a woman they just recently met when enormous chunks of fiery, volcanic ejecta is reducing the city to rubble and panic? Self-preservation would definitely be a more immediate concern. I guess it's pointless to rip this mess apart. The script doesn't allow the cast character-exploration or nuance. Some humor or genuine thrills might have redeemed the movie or even some gratuitous sex but the film is too chaste and dull for such adventure. Why did I see this movie? To save you $12.50.