Pompeii Review

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.