Pompeii

Dialogue & acting - repackaged as old English (18th century) by Hollywood for it's lyrical movieness (and to fit Hollywood stereotyping). Acting was daytime soap TV level. Characters - noncreative, plug and play characters e.g. gladiators (one black & soon to become friends with adversary - been done before); other gladiator sees parents die at Roman hands and is now old enough for revenge - also been done before; really bad Romans acting badly; aristocratic pretty daughter (still has 21st century make up, eye liner, etc.) falls for slave gladiator (of course). Action scenes - good gladiators defeat dozens of Romans as brunch (I was waiting for one hand tied behind the back and blindfolded but the writers copped out). CGI - flashes of CGI volcano every 5 to 10 minutes to remind us of what the movie is about. Familiar scenes of water rushing over the city - already used in many tsunami movies and is getting old. Looked like the same wave used in several Indian Ocean tsunami films recently, but not as well done as say in "The Impossible". Fireballs came off as comical fireworks effects.

In 79 A.D., a Celtic tribe of horsemen is slaughtered by the Roman Senator Corvus (Kiefer Sutherland), his right-hand man Proculus (Sasha Roiz) and their army. The boy Milo is the only survivor that is captured later and sold as slave. Seventeen years later, the slave Milo (Kit Harington) turns into an invincible gladiator in a province and is brought to Pompeii to participate in the games in the arena. While walking to Pompeii, the noble Cassia (Emily Browning) and her chaperone Ariadne (Jessica Lucas) cross with the path of the slaves and Cassia is fascinated by Milo. He shares the cell of Atticus (Adewale Akinnuoye- Agbaje), who is near to get his freedom depending on winning his last fight. Meanwhile Cassia meets her parents Severus (Jared Harris) and Aurelia (Carrie-Anne Moss) and learns that she has been betrothed to the corrupt Senator Corvus that is pressing her parents to marry her. During the games, the Mount Vesuvius erupts and Milos and his friend Atticus succeed to escape from the arena. But Milo wants to save his beloved Cassia in the middle of the chaos and the Romans. "Pompeii" is a full of action and dull romance in the tragic environment of the last days of Pompeii. Disaster movies were popular in the 70's ("Airport", "The Towering Inferno", and "Earthquake" among others) and Paul W.S. Anderson returns to the genre after "Titanic". The entertaining story is silly with poor lines and dialogs, but never boring. Kit Harington, the "Jon Snow" from "Games of Thrones", makes it worth to see at least on DVD. My vote is six. Title (Brazil): "Pompeia" ("Pompeii")

at how incredibly awful 'Pompeii' was. Sheesh, it was such a cheap rip Ripoff of 'Gladiator.' It seems as if Hollywood assumes the 14 to 24 year old kids have never heard of or seen 'Gladiator.' So they do a cheap "Cliff Notes" version of it. But in the new extremely dumbed down version, they start with the scene in Morocco where Russell Crowe kicks butt in the arena. Then they introduce the "high class" girl that falls in love with the cute slave guy. Then they veer off into the teen soap opera BS. Good God Man!!!! The hero and the African gladiator start off as enemies. But what do you know? After the little cute guy Orlando Bloom look a like that is 5 foot 4 earns his respect, they become best friends. Who could have predicted that? It's a cotton candy film with bad CGI. Pathetic really. If they had wanted to make a good film, they'd of had the volcano erupt at the beginning and made it 'Pompeii, Zombie Apocalypse.' I would have watched that until the end, unlike this piece of trash. Oh, my cat that was sitting next to me told me.

This is one of the worst films i have ever seen. A rehash of Conan and Gladiator. Good guy Celts are slaughtered by bad guy Romans led by Bad Actor Kiefer Sutherland. A little boy is the lone survivor. Taken to Londonium [ London ] and trained to become a Gladiator. Conan. He is so good, he is sent to Pompeii to fight in the arena. On the way he comes across a damsel in distress and helps her with her wounded horse. Love at first sight. A Roman legion arrives led by guess who? yes bad guy Kiefer Sutherland. Good guy Gladiator wants revenge. Bad guy Kiefer Sutherland has his eye on the damsel in distress, who happens to be the daughter of the headman of Pompeii, but she is in love with good guy Gladiator. Gladiators in Pompeii were the celebrities of the period. Not held in dungeons like in this movie. Also the citizens of Pompeii were Romans themselves,also unlike in this movie. I won't continue with the rest of the story, as i think you should see for yourselves. The acting was terrible, especially by Sutherland. He started with an American accent and then later an English accent. The bad guy characters were like something from an English school Pantomime. As for the disaster itself. Even with the 3d effects, it was not edge of the seat stuff. Unlike Titanic. The story in Titanic was a romance around a disaster, but without the 3d effects, you were glued to the screen. All you see as soon as the eruption comes burning rocks raining down, nothing else. Also it shows people panicking straight away, which is nonsense, because as i was told by the guide, when i visited Pompei, the populace had no idea of what was happening and just stood and watched until the lava started to flow down and even then, they tried to save their belongings. That is why so many perished and also why Versuvius was mistaken for a mountain and there is no word for Vulcanoe in Latin. Also once the smoke connected to to the sky, light pebbles rained down on the city. So for a while, they thought there was no danger. Hollywood has gone downhill in the last 20 years. They blame DVDs for people not going to the cinema, so they make more films in 3d.The standard of acting has gone downhill. There are no stories to their films any more, so they put all these effects in to compensate for this. If you want to see a good DVD about Pompei buy the DVD BBC documentary drama with Tim Piggot Smith called Pompeii The Last Day. On with it is the story about the Colosseum, called Colosseum A Gladiators Story.If you want to see a good fictional story centering around the disaster, get the TV Miniseries The Last Days Of Pompeii starring Lawrence Olivier, Anthony Quayle, Ernest Borgnine, Barbera Carrera and a host of others. I hope i have not bored you with this review, but i don't like to waste money and i am sure you don't.

This is my first review at IMDb, and I cannot withstand from warning the people reading the reviews: this movie is very bad. If I could give a zero, I'd do that. I've read so many reviews that really helped me a lot to choose the movie I'd like to watch. Pompeii (2014) is one of a few movies I didn't inspect properly before watching. And that was a big mistake. This movie has no sense, no story, actions are amateurish, emotions are artificial, dialogues are brainless. We laughed a lot during the movie on how stupid many scenes and dialogues could be. Paul Anderson should really retire. I read his books and I liked them, but as a movie director, I'm sorry it's probably not for him. After two hours watching this movie and after the last sequence of scenes, I really wonder what all that was about? Even if considering a love genre, this movie doesn't belong to it either. Love between the main characters was very funny and superficial. Please, don't waste your time on this movie. It's completely worthless. P.S. By the way, the volcano eruption was so funny. Most of the time it shoot fire bombs instead of producing lava. And the shoots were really bully. I think Paul Anderson took this from Starship Troopers where the huge alien insects shoot the similar bombs in space.