“As Mount Vesuvius erupts, Pompeii turns into an epic, shamelessly Gonzo masterpiece. The film reconfigures itself into an extended chase scene with some stunning, expressionistic carnage and destruction, which slowly envelopes the characters into a charnel house.” —Warren Zhang
Director Paul W.S. Anderson (Resident Evil: Retribution) seems like a poor choice for a movie about the fall of Pompeii. The poster child for the vulgar auteur movement made his name on slick video game adaptations, a far cry from tragic period dramas.
Unsurprisingly then, at least half of Pompeii is dreadful — but not because of Anderson’s flaws as a dramatic filmmaker. Instead, the writers are most responsible for the crap in Pompeii.
The people responsible for the Pompeii screenplay seriously need to re-evaluate their choice of profession, choice of agents, choice of friends, every moment in their lives that led up to them committing to paper one of the worst screenplays ever filmed.
Pompeii’s first half is the worst kind of bad: neither entertainingly bad nor ambitiously overreaching, it’s is just boring. The first hour or so of the film involves an insanely large ensemble of cardboard cutouts masquerading as human characters who tell us their backstories, conflicts, motivations, love interests, political alignments, etc. It’s 60 minutes of nonstop, torrential verbal and dramatic diarrhea.
Milo (Kit Harington, Game of Thrones) watches as Romans murder his parents. Splat. His love interest, Cassia (Emily Browning, God Help the Girl), gets unwanted attention from a gropey senator (Kiefer Sutherland, The Reluctant Fundamentalist). Splat. Milo grows up to be a gladiator who befriends a noble — oh my God, will you shut up and explode already?!
Anderson has never been a strong storyteller, and the hack writers happily indulge his worst storytelling instincts. Every conceivable plot cliche and trope is presented directly and sincerely with little to no nuance, rhyme or reason. Anderson’s habit of knowingly panning up to the giant volcano in the background in every other scene doesn’t help the seemingly never-ending opening half.
Fortunately, Pompeii improves greatly in its second half. As Mount Vesuvius erupts, Pompeii turns into an epic, shamelessly Gonzo masterpiece. The film reconfigures itself into an extended chase scene with some stunning, expressionistic carnage and destruction, which slowly envelopes the characters into a charnel house.
Pompeii fully embraces the cheesiness of its Gladiator-smashed-with-Titanic premise with aplomb. Anderson lets loose, staging action scenes with a skilled eye for clarity but overlaying it with hilariously overblown melodramatics and poor character logic.
The back half of Pompeii is thrilling, rollicking stuff that stops dead in its tracks only occasionally so the writers can vomit more trash down our throats. It’s so energetic and awe-inspiring that it almost (but not quite) redeems the beyond abysmal first hour.
As entertaining as the back half of Pompeii is, the movie never fully overcomes its horrendous first half. The monumentally awful story eventually drags the film back down into the abyss alongside its burnt-out setting and characters.
There are just some things explosions can’t fix.
