Pompéi

Let's start with the positive: the movie looks great, the visuals and effects really work. Little else does, though. The cast acts wooden, the story is predictable and boring, borrowing many elements from Gladiator and the end is cheesy as hell. Overall a real waste of time.

The movie Pompeii was obviously thought-up and directed around the 3D effects. The plot, acting, and script must have all been after-thoughts to the 3D fireballs shooting off the screen, 3D ashes floating in front of your eyes, and the 3D objects being hurled around by tidal waves.

It was watchable, but don't be expecting a fabulous plot that you haven't seen dozens of times in other better movies. The bad writing had most of the actors come off sounding like lifeless wooden statues that would say and do very unbelievable things just to keep the story going. Everything was very predictable. So predictable, in fact, there were a couple of moments I could have sworn I did see it before!

This was a good example why I typically do no like 3D movies. Having some good 3D effects is not a valid excuse for making a bad movie!! This definitely could have been much better!

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.

I think most peoples and my main issue with the film is the subject matter. Everyone has seen the events of pompeii on screen many times and hence the plot and ending are no surprise, so we must be entertained by only the visuals and some sort of love story. The acting and directing were mostly fine. Kit Harrington and Emily Browning were passable and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje put in a noteworthy performance. The visuals and effects were by far the best aspect and kept the film very watchable and enjoyable to an extent throughout. The script was poor and most of the usual disaster movie clichés appeared at some point or other but in no way was it as awful as in say, 2012. Overall its probably not something to see at the cinema, but probably worth a watch on DVD or TV at some point. 5/10

It's a good action paced movie which was well acted. Just a solid watchable movie. Kept me engaged and interested in the characters which is all you can ask for.