Well I saw another bad movie this past week. I was actually excited to see this one because I have studied Pompeii since I was a kid and read this extremely good book The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found. I was strait-up disappointed and I think this movie might kill Roman movies for a while. Hopefully, sword and sandal (which is one of my favorite genres) will be kept going if 300: Rise of an Empire kills it this coming weekend.
So I was really all set to be taken back to AD 79 through the power of movie magic and CGI. Unfortunately I got a lot of Jon Snow from Game of Thrones (Kit Harington) and a very weird looking woman (Emily Browning) and their various travails. We also have Kiefer Sutherland hamming it up as a Roman General turned Senator who wears his armor everywhere for some reason. He also does this hopeless, affected British accent. It goes to show you that Brits can do American accents but almost never the other way around.
The movie for the most part establishes that Jon Snow is the Celt who is the last of some unnamed horse tribe killed off by Kiefer Sutherland and a sinister looking guy that slightly resembles Anthony Weiner. John Snow is the lone survivor and he becomes a gladiator. Hmm I think there was a movie with a better actor in it called the Gladiator that had a similar plot. In fact we even have a scene where he moves up because he is a badass but goes to Pompeii to fight instead of Rome. Oliver Reed's ghost did not appear.
Well Jon Snow eventually gets to Pompeii but on the road he meets up with Browning when her horse breaks his leg. Well Snow is a bad-assed horseman and euthanized the horse making Browning all sympathetic to him. The two actors did not have very much chemistry so it pretty much amounted to there was writing some where in the script that said "John Snow falls in love with Browning, hijinks ensue"
There is some fighting and a black gladiator is introduced played by Adabisi from Oz (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) who meets up with Russell Crowe I mean John Snow. They become friends while boasting how they will kill each other in the ring. I am just so tired of how gladiators in Hollywood are portrayed in such an a-historical manner. They rarely slaughtered one another and were highly trained warriors that cost big money to maintain. They were, in many ways, like MMA fighters (but even more popular) that used deadly weapons. If you owned a Gladiator school you rarely wanted your trained fighters to die in the ring if you could help it. That was the job of criminals and Christians and such not someone that could potentially make you rich. There is no way that a resort city like Pompeii would have had a bunch of fights to the death in their Arena.
In any case the Gladiators are brought to the house of Browning's parents where they are on display for a roman dinner. Of course it wasn't a true Roman dinner which would have been cool to see on the big screen. Instead it was just some background for the two wooden leads to "fall in love" in front of. Also they establish that Sutherland and Browning were an item (kind of) when she was visiting Rome for some reason or another. Jon Snow steals a horse and other nonsense and he is caught and has to fight in some rigged match instead of Sutherland just killing him.
So the next day instead of Jon Snow fighting Adabisi for "hiiis Freeeedom!" they have to fight a bunch of gladiators dressed as Roman soliders in front of a paper-mache menhir with a spiked collar surrounding its top. I swear it got nabbed from a Warhammer Fantasy Khorne diorama. They even had a True Detective-istic swirl on it to make the derivative-ness complete. The whole set just looked awful and stupid and the entire battle scene just looking like it was taken off the cutting room floor of Gladiator. I especially liked the super dull blades that popped up throughout the movie.
Right after the fight is when Vesuvius blows its top and we go from Gladiator to Volcano without Tommy Lee Jones in 5 seconds. The mountain exploding and the disaster scenes were quite good so I can't fault it here. Lots of fleeing Romans and pyroclasts and the little known part where there was a tsunami that was caused when the mountain blew. In this part people run around, Adabisi saves some kid, and there is a hackneyed chariot chase between Sutherland and Jon Snow. We even have a slow motion death of the slave friend of Browning played by Brit actress Jessica Lucas. Um, quick someone tell the director that there weren't only black slaves in Rome. In fact, they were kind of a rare sight because they would have to have come from thousands of miles away.
In any case the acting was wooden and Kit Harington pretty much has only one expression through the whole movie. Browning was a non-factor and I liked her much better in Sucker Punch. In fact she actually looked like a different person in that movie. Someone had to point out it was the same actress. I was like "wait the beautiful girl from Sucker Punch is this emaciated waif?" I immediately thought "I hope it is just Hollywoods "thin-mania" and not heroin or something sinister like that. Well bottom line is if you want Pompeii read that book I sited above and skip this Gladiator retread full of terrible acting and stupid looking fighting.
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