This is one of the worst films i have ever seen. A rehash of Conan and Gladiator. Good guy Celts are slaughtered by bad guy Romans led by Bad Actor Kiefer Sutherland. A little boy is the lone survivor. Taken to Londonium [ London ] and trained to become a Gladiator. Conan. He is so good, he is sent to Pompeii to fight in the arena. On the way he comes across a damsel in distress and helps her with her wounded horse. Love at first sight. A Roman legion arrives led by guess who? yes bad guy Kiefer Sutherland. Good guy Gladiator wants revenge. Bad guy Kiefer Sutherland has his eye on the damsel in distress, who happens to be the daughter of the headman of Pompeii, but she is in love with good guy Gladiator. Gladiators in Pompeii were the celebrities of the period. Not held in dungeons like in this movie. Also the citizens of Pompeii were Romans themselves,also unlike in this movie. I won't continue with the rest of the story, as i think you should see for yourselves. The acting was terrible, especially by Sutherland. He started with an American accent and then later an English accent. The bad guy characters were like something from an English school Pantomime. As for the disaster itself. Even with the 3d effects, it was not edge of the seat stuff. Unlike Titanic. The story in Titanic was a romance around a disaster, but without the 3d effects, you were glued to the screen. All you see as soon as the eruption comes burning rocks raining down, nothing else. Also it shows people panicking straight away, which is nonsense, because as i was told by the guide, when i visited Pompei, the populace had no idea of what was happening and just stood and watched until the lava started to flow down and even then, they tried to save their belongings. That is why so many perished and also why Versuvius was mistaken for a mountain and there is no word for Vulcanoe in Latin. Also once the smoke connected to to the sky, light pebbles rained down on the city. So for a while, they thought there was no danger. Hollywood has gone downhill in the last 20 years. They blame DVDs for people not going to the cinema, so they make more films in 3d.The standard of acting has gone downhill. There are no stories to their films any more, so they put all these effects in to compensate for this. If you want to see a good DVD about Pompei buy the DVD BBC documentary drama with Tim Piggot Smith called Pompeii The Last Day. On with it is the story about the Colosseum, called Colosseum A Gladiators Story.If you want to see a good fictional story centering around the disaster, get the TV Miniseries The Last Days Of Pompeii starring Lawrence Olivier, Anthony Quayle, Ernest Borgnine, Barbera Carrera and a host of others. I hope i have not bored you with this review, but i don't like to waste money and i am sure you don't.
