Film Review | Pompeii

We’ve covered contemporary Rome last week with Paolo Sorrentino’s sumptuous but ultimately hollow The Great Beauty, so it’s perhaps apt that I’ve been plunged further into the region’s history this week around... or rather, the history of its extended imperial arm.

Beyond this spurious connection, however, there is very little else that links up Paul W.S. Anderson’s swords-and-sandals trash-epic Pompeii to Sorrentino’s love-hate letter to Rome… and if both films are wrong-footed and ultimately unsatisfying, they are so in very different ways.

After rising out of slavery to become a gladiator, Milo (Kit Harrington) falls for merchant’s daughter Cassia (Emily Browning), who is being coerced into marrying a nefarious Roman Senator Corvus (Kiefer Sutherland). Meanwhile, as Pompeii’s infamous lava starts to flow, Milo must escape the arena and rescue Cassia before they are both turned to ash.

Expecting anything except B-grade historical hack-and-slash from a project like this is of course foolish, so we can take that as being part and parcel of Pompeii’s DNA before we go on.

Indeed it’s not its inherent trashiness that renders this film an ultimately disappointing affair: it’s the stuffy, joyless way in which all of it is handled.

Paul W.S. Anderson – by god, not to be confused with his artistically superior, Oscar-winning namesake and colleague Paul Thomas Anderson – has carved a lucrative Hollywood cubby-hole for himself by continuously churning out a steady stream of terrible genre films which, alas, never fail to turn a sizeable profit.

For this, the director of Aliens vs Predator and the Resident Evil films surely deserves a place is the toastiest echelons of hell.

Like a slightly more budget-friendly and industrious version of Michael Bay, Anderson and his ilk glut the contemporary cinematic landscape with lowest-common-denominator rubbish that – to add (CGI) insult to injury – doesn’t even have the decency to accept its trashy status, instead playing it safe and coating itself in a boring, video-gamey wash and equally stilted dialogue – as delivered through a grating overdub.

In the particular case of Pompeii, however, his standard MO is all the more painful to observe because its basic building blocks actually do have some potential. Potential for nothing above fun history trash, but potential nonetheless.

For all intents and purposes, the film could have been a joyous repast of lurid ingredients: one part action-packed gladiator bruiser, one part class-busting romance, one part good old fashioned Ancient Roman political intrigue, all topped off with some dazzling catastrophe-porn once the legendary volcano decides to do its worst.

And that’s not even mentioning the joy of seeing A-list thespians hamming it up for the camera and doing their best to chow down on the computer-generated scenery. Mad Men’s Jared Harris – as put-upon here as he was during his run on that series – is, however, entirely wasted as Cassia’s father Severus. When he’s not allowed subtlety or depth (hint: Pompeii is neither subtle nor deep), the British actor is best at playing sly, moustache-twirling villains, and he’s deprived of the opportunity here, with the honours going to Sutherland.

And oh, what a bizarre and often infectiously terrible turn that is. And when I say bizarre, I mean it.

The script already casts Corvus as the unmitigated villain of the piece – unbeknownst to him, his fate is linked to that of Harrington’s Milo: when just a boy, our Celtic gladiator protagonist was forced to watch as Corvus slaughtered his family and their fellow villagers in an act of overzealous road planning – but he adds fuel to the corny fire by performing all of his lines as if he’s – wait for it – Jeremy Irons in one of his many ill-advised B-movie cod-fantasy villain roles (see: Dungeons and Dragons, Eragon, Beautiful Creatures).

Our stunningly attractive leads complete the package.

Harrington – looking for all the world as though he’s just stepped off the set of Game of Thrones for a lunch break, so similar is Milo to our beloved Jon Snow – sports an eminently poster-friendly six-pack, while Pre-Raphaelite beauty Emily Browning coasts through the committee-written script without any major hiccups (which, incidentally, shouldn’t be cause for celebration: having more than proven her mettle in the disturbing, erotically-charged Sleeping Beauty (2011), Browning is yet another wasted talent here).

For all its shortcomings on the acting front, its terribly stilted dialogue and its disappointingly video-gamey cinematography, let it not be said that the film doesn’t provide some good, meaty action.

It’s just a shame that it only all really kicks into gear an hour in, by which time the stale and stupid setup would have sucked any joy out of the experience.

The climactic gladiatorial battle delivers the thrills, and knowing that the volcano is bound to erupt at any point reassures us that, at the very least, we’ll be spared any more ‘writing’ and ‘acting’ in favour of explosions and frantic running – which Anderson is clearly more adept at than anything else.

But that’s the thing: when Pompeii sort of works, it only sort of works because the sum of its parts is so boringly, predictably arranged as to have any joy or surprise sucked out of it.

In a world where Marvel Studios have succeeded in giving us blockbusters with verve and humour, and in which historical drama is well served on television, Anderson’s film is the runt of the pack – an evolutionary failure.