Pompeii (2014)

Sometimes a bad movie just looks good, and the moment I first saw the trailers for Pompeii I concluded that movie looked enjoyably terrible. Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson of Resident Evil and Death Race fame, Pompeii is a surprisingly conventional movie, my guess is it was kind of a vanity project, a retro genera picture that the director 'just had to make', and in 3D. The story and characters are stock, or to be generous archetypal. This movie is the love triangle from Titanic melded to Gladiator and in the end blown up with a volcano (oops, spoiler).

Kit (I've never heard of him either) Harington is Milo our lead, a captured Celt brought to Pompeii to participant in the gladiatorial games. Aussie actress Emily Browning is Milo's love interest Cassia, the daughter of prominent Pompeian's played by Jared Harris (son of Richard) and Carrie-Anne Moss. Cassia has just returned from Rome trying to get away from the romantic advances of Senator Corvus (Kiefer Sutherland, just the thought of whom in any kind of  period piece almost makes me chuckle), who follows her home hoping to use the prospect of his investing in Cassia's fathers (ironically ill-timed) re-development plans for the city, to basically purchase her as his bride. Milo and Cassia cross paths, become interested in one another, but Corvus (among others) stands in the way, and it turns out that 17 years ago he was the Roman officer responsible for the destruction of Milo's village and the death of his parents (Sutherland by the way steals this movie he's so over the top).

There's also Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Atticus, a slave who is at first Milo's rival and then his friend, as well as Jessica Lucas who plays Cassia's loyal servant Ariadne, who director Anderson does not skimp on the generous cleavage shots of. There are a few other characters and various dramatic goings on, including a cool gladiator fight prior to Vesuvius erupting, after which there is a lot of running and trying to get away, with occasional breaks to wreak petty vengeance. All in all, it was the kind of craptastic movie I was looking for, fun, but obvious and clichéd, just made to be a guilty a pleasure, and it succeeds. **1/2