If you were hoping “Pompeii” would ditch the lava in exchange for nonsensical political and romantic melodrama, Paul W.S. Anderson’s latest is for you – and probably only you.
“Pompeii” opens with a baby Jon Snow – er, Milo. He thinks he’s all safe and sound, but upon emerging from his hut, finds his town and his parents being massacred at the hands of the Romans lead by Corvus (Kiefer Sutherland). Little Milo manages to escape, but ultimately is thrown into slavery and raised as a gladiator. Seventeen years later, Milo (Kit Harington) is a top fighter and chosen to wow the crowd in Pompeii in a one-on-one battle with their leading contender, Atticus (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), while Mount Vesuvius threatens to boil over right behind them.
When you pay to see a movie directed by Paul W.S. Anderson called “Pompeii,” you expect carnage, lava, explosions, nonstop action and devastating destruction. Sadly, you’ll have to settle for two of the five. “Pompeii” certainly adheres to that PG-13 rating because it’s absolutely impossible to overlook the lack of blood when Anderson has his characters slitting throats left and right. And the lava? You’d think there’d be some in a movie about a volcano eruption, but not here. There’s an abundance of ash and flying fireballs milking the extra dimension for all it’s worth, but lava didn’t make the cut. Fireball overload results in one explosion after the next as Anderson decimates his idyllic representation of 79 A.D. Pompeii, so sadly that means the other missing component is the non-stop action and that makes for an absolutely devastating flaw.
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