MOVIE REVIEW: Pompeii (2014)
I remember this movie being out, and my initial reaction of disgust was tied to the fact that this was some sort of attempt to cash in on the Young-Adult romance movie craze started by Twilight, that movie made during the Young-Adult book adaptation to movie craze. The other reason: the makers of this movie were trying to make a buck off a tragedy (albeit an ancient one). it’s in the same realm of the 9/11 movies no one asked for, and the 21st-century tsunami movies (where White people died) no one asked for. The goal is to tell stories you may not have heard, when no one wanted to hear those stories because it hurts too much. I suppose since everyone involved in or witnessed the tragedy at Pompeii has died and everyone that left them behind or buried them has died, it should be OK, right? Right?
On with the story, despite the idea that we already know the outcome.
A young Celtic boy named Milo is the lone survivor of his rebel village, attacked by the Romans in their conquest of Eire under command of Quintas Attius Corvus (played by veteran actor Kiefer Sutherland). The boy is sold into slavery and becomes the gladiator named “The Celt”, and grown up to be Kit Harrington (the actor portraying Jon Snow in Game of Thrones). Slaying in Londinum (aka the city that would become London) is beneath his caliber of combat, so his owner takes him to the Pompeii to find his fortune there. On the road in chains, a cart passes by and hits a pothole, sending a horse lame. Said carriage holds Lady Cassia (a slimmer-than-usual Emily Browning, from the Lemony Snicket movie), and her handmaiden Ariadne (the golden brown goddess Jessica Lucas, from Cloverfield). Milo puts the horse out of its misery (as a kindness) and is led to the local coliseum and meets Atticus (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), an African gladiator whose next fight will be the one that makes him a free man. He’s the Danny Glover of this film, making Milo the Mel Gibson. He’s got the hair for it.
Side Plot: Cassia has run away from Rome, where she had been studying to become…some sort of cultured woman worthy of marriage (I’m guessing). She has returned to her mom Aurelia (Carrie-Anne Moss, aka Trinity from The Matrix trilogy) and her dad Severus (Jared Harris). What gets held back for so long is the why: she’s running from a particularly dogged suitor that she does not like or agree with. To make matters worse, it’s Corvus — yes the same Corvus that wiped out Milo’s village some 18 years ago. He’s an ass, representing the new emperor Titus (whom no one in Pompeii likes and we never see) and using his new power to force people to do his will IN THE NAME OF THE EMPEROR.
Milo and Cassia become star-cross’d lovers when they choose to run away together on a stolen horse, running free and flouting the social norms of ancient Roman society: a high-born girl with but a lowly slave, no matter how hunky, is an abomination. Roman society via the hand of Corvus decrees Milo die at the hands of Atticus (his freedom fight), but Atticus’ greedy handlers decide the African gladiator would be better off dead and they arrange for a change in the program: they will re-enact the massacre of Milo’s hometown and heavily stack the odds against the gladiators. Milo and Atticus figure out what’s up in-between what passes for a fight scene: lots of CGI editing and composites, with rapid and sharp cuts. It doesn’t matter, b/c the guards come and aim to mow the two gladiators down. Is this is the end for our heroes?
It’s the end of our heroes (and everyone in Pompeii) when the top of Mount Vesuvius blows, blocking out the sky and raining hellfire and stone on their heads. If you were paying attention in history class, you may recall that many of the people in Pompeii were buried under the ash and their dead forms preserved even as their bodies decayed. This aspect is played for romantic effect at the end when our main players could escape south but instead chose to die young, beautiful, and in love. Of particular note was Atticus’ death where he died fighting and was undefeated as a free man. I had to suppress a proud whoop when the pyroclasm consumed him; I was happy he was free.
At the end of it all, the movie was in poor taste, given the recent disasters of the decade when Pompeii was made: the Fukushima earthquake and tsunami of 2011, the Haitian earthquake of 2010, the 2004 Indian Ocean mega-thrust tsunami (which got its own movie, The Impossible, in 2012), and Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana in 2005. This movie was very bad and should not have been made, because there are still a lot of people out there hurting. When a person can walk out of Pompeii with a weird look on their faces…think about why. It might not be because a movie is bad.
— previously published 6/12/2016 on Facebook Notes —
