Lack of good storyline.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

This adventure movie is based on a real event, the destruction of Pompeii by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. It is not meant to be a documentary about the event itself. As an adventure-romance it is excellent. Story, acting, and special effects all work well together to move the story along to the spectacular climax. It is irelevant whether the facts are accurately portrayed anymore than they are in Ben-hur, the Ten Commanments, or any other epic fictional piece. The only way to judge it is does it hold your attention, do you care about the characters, and is it enjoyable to see. In this, Pompeii exceeds the general run of the mill adventure movies and remains one of my favourites, whether or not it is factually correct,.

The producers were probably hoping for a 'Titanic'-like romantic disaster film. Sadly, though, 'Pompeii' suffers from silly dialogue and unconvincing, bland acting. I did not find the whole Gladiator back story interesting. The continuous fighting despite the chaos of the eruption was silly and annoying. And, honestly, how many near-death moments am I supposed to endure in one film? Also, the chemistry between Kit Harrington and Emily Browning didn't feel natural. Kiefer Sutherland's acting was similar to stage acting and carried very little weight.The recreation of the city of Pompeii was amazing, and the film did have some incredible visuals - notably the collapsing villa scene, and off course, the final eruption moments.

Sometimes is fun to watch a movie on TV just to trade jokes with your friends. Pompeii is one of those movies, so bad it is almost comical (but not quite).The plot is the following: the barbarian hero - weirdly named Milo - witnesses his tribe been slaughtered by evil Romans, under the command of super-evil Jack Bauer, in Roman rags. Milo ends up as a gladiator in Londinium and from there he's moved to Pompeii, because he's just too good a fighter to rot in the province. Along the road he helps Cassia, a damsel in distress and it's love at first sight. Once in Pompeii Milo is incarcerated with a politically correct tough guy (sort of Jules from Pulp Fiction, only with a lot more muscles). Under the flimsiest pretense, Milo and Tough Guy are taken to Cassia's villa, where Milo has another chance at intimate conversation with the girl and also discovers that Jack Bauer plans to marry her (obviously against her will).The following day, the sh*t hits the fan: during the games in the arena Milo and Tough Guy are targeted for destruction by all the other gladiators, but the Vesuvius decides to start erupting there and then. All the main characters try to escape one way or the other. In the best Titanic tradition, unconcerned by tsunami, earthquakes and flying balls of fire, Milo, Jack Bauer, Tough Guy and other Romans still waste time fighting each other. Despite lava and pyroclastic flow moving very slowly, the success rate of the escape will be very low.Kit Harington of GOT fame is Milo. He's cute but really short. All the other male leads are taller and the actress playing Cassia was probably chosen just because shorter than him (in the best Alan Ladd-Veronica Lake tradition). A final word of demerit for the unbelievably bad CGI.

It's a movie based on the history of Mount Vesuvius. It erupted AD 79 and it's lava destroyed entire Pompeii. In this movie, you will see the love of the destruction. As I love history, I loved this movie so much. May be I'll go there to visit Pompeii someday. You will observe something different in this movie.