Dialogue & acting - repackaged as old English (18th century) by Hollywood for it's lyrical movieness (and to fit Hollywood stereotyping). Acting was daytime soap TV level.

Characters - noncreative, plug and play characters e.g. gladiators (one black & soon to become friends with adversary - been done before); other gladiator sees parents die at Roman hands and is now old enough for revenge - also been done before; really bad Romans acting badly; aristocratic pretty daughter (still has 21st century make up, eye liner, etc.) falls for slave gladiator (of course).

Action scenes - good gladiators defeat dozens of Romans as brunch (I was waiting for one hand tied behind the back and blindfolded but the writers copped out).

CGI - flashes of CGI volcano every 5 to 10 minutes to remind us of what the movie is about. Familiar scenes of water rushing over the city - already used in many tsunami movies and is getting old. Looked like the same wave used in several Indian Ocean tsunami films recently, but not as well done as say in "The Impossible". Fireballs came off as comical fireworks effects.

While not a classic, Pompeii is actually a pretty enjoyable disaster/action flick that I couldn't wait to see back in 2014. I remember enjoying it in cinemas and have just watch it again for the 2nd time. I really need to get around to watching the 24 minutes of cut footage as I feel several characters were highly underused, especially Carrie Ann Moss and Jessica Lucas. While the ending still kinda annoys me, I really don't think it could've ended any other way.

It's fast paced, has some great action scenes and is an overall pretty decent. Nowhere near as bad as others are making out to be. I wish Emily Browning would make more big budget movies.

Pompeii may very well have earned the title as the first suburb albeit it was some miles from Rome, near where Naples is now. It was a pleasure city where the rich and powerful of Rome came to relax and indulge the vices. Being near Mount Versuvius it was warm there all the time with thermal like heat underground. But in 79 AD Versuvius erupted and the place was destroyed.

If you're expecting to see something like a remake of The Last Days Of Pompeii I'd forget that notion. The last third of the film Pompeii comes down and Versuvius erupts with some nice computer graphic spectacle. But the plot is a skimpy one, about a slave boy turned gladiator and the patrician woman who thinks he's something special in those gladiator tights. Boy and girl are Kit Anderson and Emily Browning.

Villain of the piece in a truly classic Snidely Whiplash is Kiefer Sutherland who chewed the scenery which is what you do when in a turkey. He's a corrupt Roman Senator who wants to take Browning back to Rome as a trophy wife. Not if our gladiator hero can help it. Then the volcano erupts and everybody's got bigger problems.

You'll like the spectacle, but the story is a ball of corn.