Pompeii (2014)
Directed by Paul W. S. Anderson
In 79 A.D., Milo, a slave turned gladiator, finds himself in a race against time to save his true love Cassia, the beautiful daughter of a wealthy merchant who has been unwillingly betrothed to a corrupt Roman Senator. As Mount Vesuvius erupts in a torrent of blazing lava, Milo must fight his way out of the arena in order to save his beloved as the once magnificent Pompeii crumbles around him.
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The first half of the movie is strongly reminiscent of Russell Crowe’s Gladiator, as Milo and fellow slave-fighter Atticus (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) grow from mortal enemies into unlikely allies, plotting to take down the sneering Roman senator Corvus (Kiefer Sutherland, in a so-bad-it’s-good performance).
Pompeii is saddled with an air of intense seriousness and romantic fatalism that, under better direction, might be genuinely stirring, but here plays as a dim shadow of real emotion that makes its mash-up of Best Picture Oscar winners Titanic (1997) and Gladiator (2000) feel all the more self-conscious.
If you’re going to present non-stop carnage in the arena, then the least you could do is make it suitably gory, like Ridley Scott did in Gladiator .
Another acting scion, Jared Harris of “Mad Men’’ (whose late dad Richard played the murdered emperor in “Gladiator’’), turns up to exclaim things like “By Juno’s tit!’’ He’s Cassia’s businessman father, who needs Corvus’ financial backing to replace Pompeii’s crumbling (little does he know), century-old stadium.
Paul W.S. Anderson must have had “Titanic” playing on a loop for his cast and crew during the making of “Pompeii,” because the director’s sword-and-sandals/disaster movie borrows heavily from the James Cameron drama.
Pompeii is saddled with an air of intense seriousness and romantic fatalism that, under better direction, might be genuinely stirring, but here plays as a dim shadow of real emotion that makes its mash-up of Best Picture Oscar winners Titanic (1997) and Gladiator (2000) feel all the more self-conscious.
In this Titanic love triangle, Sutherland is playing the Billy Zane-as-heavy-handed antagonist role, although one who’s dangerous with swords and far more politically ambitious.
It’s there alright – Ridley Scott regurgitated with lifeless imprecision, but the real template for this pyroclastic non-event is James Cameron’s Titanic.
But in porting over Titanic’s horror-as-backdrop-for-doomed-love narrative, Pompeii cannot replicate the kismet that made James Cameron’s film, at least from a functional standpoint, work.
You could say that it’s in the tradition of other disaster movies, like those that Roland Emmerich (“The Day After Tomorrow,” “2012”) is known for, and to be fair, those aren’t films that you expect much in the way of character or plot either.
If Anderson had found a way, ala Roland Emmerich and his brilliant 2012, to simply set up some characters and pile on the chaos, we’d be more than pleased.
We occasionally do get them, including two ("Dante's Peak" and the imaginatively titled "Volcano") in 1997, but more often than not such lava spewing monstrosities are just supporting characters as occurred in "2012."
But while "Pompeii" isn't as ludicrous a cheese fest as, say "2012," Anderson completely undercuts anything positive about his film with his big romantic ending flourish.
I suspect a better movie could have been made from the 2003 novel of the same name by Robert Harris, who wrote a script for Roman Polanski to direct; the Actors’ Strike in 2007 killed the project (Polanski and Harris turned to The Ghost Writer instead).
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The “Death Race” and “Resident Evil” franchises have turned enormous profits across the globe, and this new picture, which combines a slew of genres, is perhaps Anderson’s biggest-budget outing yet (though $100 million seems a pittance in Hollywood these days).
Director Paul W.S. Anderson has what many would probably consider to be one of the worst filmographies in all of cinema, which includes five “Resident Evil” films, “Alien vs. Predator,” “The Three Musketeers,” and “Death Race.”
…who is best known for directing the “Resident Evil” movies and other goofy stuff like “Soldier” and “Death Race.”
Anderson has learned a few things about movie mechanics in his long years spent enlivening zombies (the Resident Evil franchise), speed demons (the Death Race franchise), space creatures (Event Horizon, AVP: Alien vs. Predator) and other multiplex distractions.
But with his wife and muse Milla Jovovich absent this go-round (for the first time since 2008’s Death Race ), he opts for an intensely melodramatic love story.
For prime examples of how he screws things up old school, see Alien vs. Predator, Resident Evil: Afterlife, The Three Musketeers or Death Race.