Imagine an ancient city neighboring an active volcano. Black smoke has completely taken the skies, the toxic aroma is filling the lungs of the civilians and suffocating them. All of this chaos has flooded the city. Finally, the volcano erupts engulfing the doomed city and leaving it inbedded in cinder.
Now take that awesome backdrop, and add a Romeo and Juliet-esque plot.
Yes, this is apparently a romance story despite what I have seen in various trailers. It does have a tediously slow build-up to the climax. It first kicks off with our protagonist Milo (played by Kit Harrington) watching his entire tribe be slaughtered by the Romans. He is eventually captured, turned into a gladiator, then met our Juliet of this story: Cassia (played by Emily Browning). It was an odd meeting actually, Harrington puts one of the horses, that was escorting Cassia to the doomed city, who was injured out of its misery by breaking its neck. From the get-go she develops feelings for him.
She falls in love with a guy just because he killed her horse. Is she that easy?
The exchange in dialogue was one of the more unusual parts of this film. We see Harrington start befriending another gladiator named Atticus (Played by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). It’s awkward how they become friends. First they talk about killing each other so much that literally every conversation includes “Hey, I’m going to stab you,” or something similar.
One thing I do really have to give this movie credit for was the CGI and combat scenes. Sword fighting is pretty fun to watch actually. The volcanic eruptions and building collapsing on each other were done in a rather detailed manner. Too bad this alone could not make up for the lackluster story.
Pompeii, its history, we all know what happens. It was basically a realistic game of “The floor is lava” so it’s hard to not spoil the ending because Pompeii was completely devastated. Very few people survived, there is however, a very important moral to take from this, and that moral is “Love and passion could conclude in your fiery demise.”