Pompeia

Hollywood deals with an ancient catastrophe.

The above phrase contains all one needs to be aware with regards to Pompeii. Brilliant and breathtaking spectacle marred by superficial storyline.

We live the last days of Pompeii leading to the eruption of Vesuvius. A slave arrives in town in order to fight for his life as part of a spectacle for a senator from Rome. He befriends another gladiator and the daughter of the town's governor falls for him.

On the one hand, a great job has been done to escalate the audiences tension as we await for Armageddon to hit and the visual climax does not disappoint. The effects are spectacular and the destruction is displayed to its full core.

Sadly, whilst these men who were treated like animals and were an object of sport for their slave owners had a chance to escape they put everything to jeopardy for a girl crush who was also part of the system that oppressed them. Had this been presented from the angle of a friendship between two men that were to fight one another to death it would have some resonance but for some cheesy romance it proved a major anticlimax in the otherwise impressive high point leading to sheer indifference as to whether any of them survived or not.

You can take this movie from two different sides.

As somebody who is very much interested in history and geography and has studied both for many years, this movie is obviously full of mistakes and wrong stereotypes. It is almost as inaccurate as the "Spartacus" series. And this is never an original movie. We have all watched movies with very similar story lines about the evil Romans who want to control everything, the poor gladiators who stand up against them and the forbidden love between a rich young woman and a foreign slave. I can understand why many people are rating this film down. If you really want to watch a sophisticated movie about that time, go for the classic "Ben- Hur".

What I think is strange is that all these stereotypes were highly predictable from the trailers only. I am asking myself why people even went to watch this movie if they were going to hate it for the reasons mentioned above. Some people just want to bash a movie and seem to have a very sad life if they waste their time watching movie they dislike so much.

I went to watch the movie for something different. I wanted to watch a colourful movie with impressive sets and costumes and stunning 3D effects of an exploding volcano. I was eager to watch a fast pace flick with a lot of fighting scenes, some tension here and there and maybe a few love scenes with beautiful actresses. And I exactly got that.

In addition to this, the acting was just good enough and included a few interesting characters. I really liked Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje and Jessica Lucas in this film even though they played stereotypical characters and could have had more screening time. If you are going to watch this movie for Carrie-Anne Moss or Kiefer Sutherland, please do not. They have been much better in other movies in the past.

In the end, it all depends on you. If you want to watch an original and profound movie and learn something about the Roman Empire, just forget it. If you want to watch a effect ridden action adventure, you are going to like this. It is not the movie of the year but I surely had a great time watching it.

This was a complete waste fo time. Here are the main reasons:

1. The performance by the main characters was very poor and artificial. 2. The director did a bad job, as did the editor. 3. The main story is weak and uninspired. There are clichés all over the place. Dialogue is poor and boring. The whole story is completely dubious and it is hard to take the movie seriously. 4. Historically speaking, the film sacrifices the real events that occurred for the sake of extra special effects. The fact that two cities were destroyed before anything got to Pompeii is ignored completely. The 'fire rain' on Pompeii also never happened, as did the tsunami. It simply made no sense to add everything but the kitchen sink into this movie. 'The Gladiator' was fictional, but it never claimed to be anything else. This film claims to be based on real events, when it clearly isn't in the most important aspects of what happened that day. In Pompeii, people died because they inhaled the smoke, not because fire rained down on them or tsunamis washed them away. The arena (stadium) was never destroyed by the earhquake and it still stands in Pompeii to this day. Dubious to the extreme.

Overall very very poor.

POMPEII is a disaster film directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, starring Kit Harrington and Keifer Sutherland.

The film revolves around a boy who grows up to be a slave and eventually witnesses one of the biggest volcano tragedies in Pompeii.

Pompeii is quite an enjoyable time. I went in the cinema expecting a complete dud of a film, but I came out surprised at how much I had underrated the film. Inspite of the poster and trailer of the film failing to impress, the performances are great, and the action was extremely entertaining. The effects and directing were top-notch, especially after the volcano eruption commences. However, the film doesn't have a GREAT storyline and it does have that 'fake' factor which involves every other person dying and the main hero surviving through all the circumstances. ALSO, a gentle reminder about how the first half of the film is rough copy of Gladiator and the second half is a direct copy of Titanic.

A special mention about the 3D effects of the film. It truly is worth its price, because it just enhances the whole experience of the film, and adds to the enjoyable factor of the film.

In conclusion, inspite of its flaws, POMPEII is quite a good film. Don't go in expecting the best movie of 2014, and go in with an underrated opinion of the film, like I did, and promise that you'll have a great time.

POMPEII- 6.5/10

Many people are out there saying it's "historically inaccurate", it's "a remade of gladiator WITH A VOLCANO!" and a very cliché film. but I'm saying it is a really good movie on it's own, considering that this IS A DISASTER MOVIE. And in many aspects this is better than 2012, Volcano, or other movies like these. For starters, there is an actual plot to the movie before the volcano erupts.

Other things I liked:

• The gladiatorial theme is well presented. You can see people who hate being a gladiator, people who are just waiting for their freedom, people who believe they are gods in the arena, and so on, and you can watch how the majority of Romans loved these shows, but some didn't. You can make yourself an idea of the weather of that theme.

• The romance is believable. I mean, it happens very fast, but it's not Disney's "Real Love" They are just two people who LIKE each other caught in the massive chaos of a volcano, not much more.

• the special effects are plain awesome! Not only the gigantic explosion and lava bombs, and tsunamis. Also the small things, like the views of the city in the background, and the aerial shots.

• The city was amazing. People complain "Pompeii is not a port city" Well, actually it WAS, but the eruption changed the shape of the coastline. And the fact that THAT city shown in the movie WAS Pompeii. They actually shoot in place and then recreated the city out of the remainings using CGI. So the grid shape, the walls and everything is in place just as it was 2000 years ago. Archaeologists have in fact praised the director for his recreation of the city

• the volcano. It's the star of the movie without a doubt. It seems to have almost a personality. The way the eruption happened was very close to what actually happened. Some artistic liberties were made for the sake of entertaining. You won't be seeing any clichéd lava river because Mount Vesubius doesn't work that way.

• The ending. It was amazing. I can't spoil it for you, but making it in any other way would have damaged the quality of the film.

• The acting. It was really good for what I was expecting. Milo surprised me a lot, because I could really believe him as a lead man. The girl also. She seemed so plain in photos, but once the movie started I could say she nailed the part perfectly and was by no means just "miss fanservice", as girls in these kinds of movies tend to be. The real surprise was Atticus. The actor totally stealed the movie for himself in every scene, something that was perfect for an invicted champion in the peak of his gladiatorial career.

What didn't I like? The fact that the other famous city in the vicinity of Vesubius(Herculaeum, I think it's called) wasn't showed in the aerial shots. I mean, obviously the movie would be to complicated if we include it in the plot, but an aerial cameo of this other city would have been a fine addition to the movie, and would have improved the accuracy of it.