Pompeii is an enjoyable and ridiculous ride, if you’re willing to
accept the cheese and expect nothing new. Firstly it’s very camp. Keither Sutherland performs with the subtlety of a
Disney villain, making Jafar look Tony Sporano. His English accent is straight
out of The Hollywood guide to bad guy voices, and he wouldn’t sound out of place
on The Death Star. The dialogue is clunky, almost cringe worthy at times, but
the quality actors make the best out of what they’re given, like if Marco
Pierre White had to make you an omelette out of dogshit and fag ends.
Kit Harrington is still Jon Snow (he was cast
because of his ‘Thrones performance)
but without the northern accent. He plays Milo ‘The Celt’, a gladiator in
Pompeii, the city resisting the Roman Empire, sitting at the bottom of Vesuvius.
He witnessed his entire family’s massacre at a young age and so is surly and
brooding for the first hour of the movie. The first hour in fact is pretty
boring, and Jon Snow has little to do but scrap with his inmates in gladiator
prison. He hardly talks or makes any impression until he starts gladiating and
falls for Emily Browning’s Cassia, the daughter of the city’s ruler and object
of evil Senator Corvus’s (Keither Sutherland) affections. It really kicks off around
halfway though. The action scenes are great; loads of cool things happen that are
best left unspoilt. Obviously you get people running from lava, but the
gladiator aspect brings surprisingly impressive swordfights into the mix.
Unfortunately the editing ruins it a little; the takes are often too short, so
it’s hard to concentrate, and the 3D didn’t help (the 3D is pointless by the
way; there’s not nearly enough lava or ash or rocks coming at you for a volcano
movie), but the action set pieces are still gripping.
The film’s predictability is slightly
more charming than problematic: you know each character’s fate within minutes
of their introduction, but the film is playful enough to just about get away
with it. The more mature aspects of the film (Milo’s family being killed) don’t
exactly sit well with the 12A certificate, but the gore of an 18 wouldn’t have
worked with the simple, family friendly love story at the heart of the film. It’s
nowhere near perfect but if you just go with it and (particularly) if you’re a
Kit Harrington fan, it’s really enjoyable.
I’ll definitely watch it when it’s on at Christmas.
