Pompeii (2014) - Paul W. S. Anderson

Set in the times of the Roman Empire, Paul W.S. Anderon's Pompeii tells the story of Milo, a young man who witnesses his entire family slaughtered by the Romans, enslaved, and forced to fight as a gladiator for their amusement.  Now in the city of Pompeii, Milo discovers that the man responsible for his parents death, Senator Corvus, is visiting the city, intent on wedding the beautiful daughter of a wealthy politician in Pompeii. Judging from the small segments which bookend the film, Paul W.S. Anderson is trying to make a serious film, but almost everything about Pompeii is derivative, lazy, and silly.  The whole narrative of Pompeii is a collage of ideas from better films, with Milo and Cassai's respective plights being incredibly generic and uninteresting. The love story between these two characters is slapped together, them first meeting due to Milo's ability to tame or as Cassai says "talk to horses".  These actors have no chemistry, with Kit Harrington bringing absolutely nothing to his role in a sleepwalking performance.  It always amazes me how some filmmakers that can do disaster type action sequences with ease yet struggle when it comes to more traditional action set pieces.  Well, Paul W.S. Anderson is yet another example of this, with Pompeii having ineffective fight sequences that use ramped up visuals and editing to create an exhausting experience. Once the volcano begins to erupt the experience does become more visceral with everything up to that point almost feeling cheap. Paul W.S. Anderson's Pompeii is exactly what you would expect, a generic, stupid narrative that is there to kill time until the CGI mayhem begins.

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