Blu-ray Review: Tepid Volcano Movie ‘Pompeii’ Starring Kit Harrington’s Abs

Printer-friendly versionE-mail page to friendPDF version

CHICAGO – With regards to its production, Paul W.S. Anderson’s “Pompeii” is a period film based on current trends, honoring both the apocalypse fascination spurred by the Mayans’ recent miscalculation, and the ascent of Harrington’s star power via the popular TV series “Game of Thrones.” With neither guaranteeing a strong future for themselves through Pompeii, there is at least some bankability in Harrington’s abs.

Rating: 1.5/5.0

The hard-cut results of a “300”-like regimen, Harrington’s stomach muscles have more charisma in a few film frames than his face, or the manner in which Harrington stubbornly manipulates his often-agape mouth. Instead of harnessing his first cinematic lead role, Harrington looks confused, a spiritual continuation of his choice to become this film’s empty vessel for which the audience must fill in with the idea of a more significant hero.

But as it harbors a defeating romance for formula, “Pompeii” has a discerning lack of spark for a love story of which a volcano’s eruption is complemented. The screenplay from Janet Scott Batchler, Lee Batchler, and Michael Robert Johnson pairs two pretty people whose deepest bond is the indifference that went into their inception. With little chemistry between Browning and Harrington, the two wade through unashamedly expected character arcs, and in a testament to their sole physical attraction, end in the arms of each other while the volcano erases these characters to the response of a viewer’s shoulder shrug. Nevertheless, as their embrace is shown preserved in ash in bookend images, “Pompeii” does not earn its visual reference to the opening shots of Alain Resnais’ “Hiroshima Mon Amour.”

Anderson manages his presentation of a sword-and-sandal film with a definitive sense of superficiality, investing little of his visuals into establishing an intricate image of his complicated metropolis. Instead, he is more focused on letting lazy anachronisms within design and dialogue scoot by. He employs his creative prowess with this retelling to intentionally not vitalize its semblance, paralleling Pompeii more to spoofs of the era than similarly serious dramas.

While modifying the devastating mini-apocalypse of Pompeii into a padded piece of period storytelling, the mountain remains its definitive bookend of which there is no escape. Anderson’s film honors its power with his own tragic futility, staging archetypes that exist for no reason but to be quaintly slaughtered. “Pompeii” is a tepid Hollywood commodity ultimately forged for a humdrum sense of safety, its potential of cataclysmic reigning chaos be damned.

Pompeii was released on Blu-ray on May 20, 2014
Photo credit: TriStar Pictures

Synopsis: Focusing its superficial narrative around the title city and only using its climactic natural disaster as a communal third act punch-line, Pompeii tells a tale of doomed lovers who have a fleeting courtship in the middle of their life-then-death circumstances. Rising actor Kit Harrington plays Milo, a full-time slave and part-time gladiator whose entire tribe was erased by a Roman senator named Corvus (played by Kiefer Sutherland, gagging on an accent). While being transported to Pompeii in 79 AD, Milo catches the eye of Cassia (a spaced-out Emily Browning), the daughter of a wealthy merchant (Jared Harris) whose hand is being aggressively sought by Corvus. Corvus holds ransom the emperor’s financial support in the fruition of Pompeii until Cassia’s petrified parents relinquish their daughter to him. As Milo and Cassia are threatened with being shackled for the rest of their lives, their last chance at freedom is allotted when neighboring volcano Vesuvius begins to violently cast its apolitical judgment across the whole city.

Special Features:
o Filmmakers’ Commentary
o The Assembly - Cast and Characters
o The Volcanic Eruption - Special Effects
o 20 Deleted Scenes
o The Gladiators - Stunts
o The Journey - Production Design
o The Costume Shop - Costume Design
o Pompeii: Buried in Time - Behind the Scenes of Ancient History’s Greatest Disaster
o Blu-ray 3D version of “Pompeii”
o Digital Copy of “Pompeii”

By Nick Allen
Contributor
HollywoodChicago.com