Let's Go Out To The Movies: Pompeii 3D

Alo Party Peoples.

Please allow me to start with some history. There once was a town called Pompeii. It was a Roman town in southern Italy near where Naples is today. It was a center of commerce and its soil was very fertile, thus the town was very wealthy. In 72 AD the nearby Mount Vesuvius erupted, burying the town in ash. The town was abandoned and eventually forgotten about, until 1599 when a Spanish architect digging a canal rediscovered it. The town is now an archaeological site and tourist attraction, and much of what we know about Roman life at the height of the Pax Romana comes from it.

There have been other attempts to make the town's final days into drama, a bunch of documentaries, the first section of the Cambridge Latin Course is set there, a pretty decent Doctor Who episode* was wrung from it, and now this big budget disaster movie directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. How is it?

Milo (Kit Harrington) is a gladiator in Roman Britain at the height of the empire's power. He's quite good at his job, so his master brings him to Pompeii during the festival of Vinalia. There he meets a wealthy girl named Cassia (Emily Browning) at a party and he catches her eye by being a horse whisperer. Unfortunately, he is set to die in the arena the next day, and Cassia's father has already promised her to the senator Corvus (Keifer Sutherland), none of which matters because during the festival Vesuvius does what it's known for and kills the entire town.

It isn't terribly engaging. Kit Harrington's facial expression barely changes at all over the course of the movie, everyone else does a decent job though, and the director has no idea how to film action. You would think that action scenes wouldn't be that big a deal in a romance movie like this, but they keep cutting to Milo's arena and those scenes are not very well done. The romance is un-engaging, and you just end up thinking "when is the volcano going to get here?". Which is made worse by the fact that the film constantly cuts to the volcano, like it's teasing the audience.

Granted, when we finally do get to the eruption, it's all very pretty looking, but it's only spectacle because you don't care about any of the people involved.

Overall, you can safely give this one a pass, and to all my fellow Latin students out there, Caecilius is never mentioned. Not even once. Sorry. I thought that could have made a decent flick too.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B

*One that incidentally featured the new Doctor playing Caecilius. I've heard rumors that this will become a plot point.