Film review: doomed romance erupts in Pompeii

POMPEII
Starring: Kit Harington, Emily Browning, Kiefer Sutherland
Director: Paul W.S. Anderson
Category: IIB

In AD 79, Mount Vesuvius, the volcano overlooking the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, erupted catastrophically. A fountain of molten rock, pulverised pumice and black ash shot 33 kilometres into the air and two lethal pyroclastic flows destroyed the two towns and most of their 16,000 inhabitants.

This is brought vividly to life in British director Paul W.S. Anderson's Pompeii. A sword-and-sandals epic with an ill-fated love story at its core and political intrigue against the backdrop of one of history's most famous natural disasters, it comes across as Gladiator meets The Notebook meets 2012. In short: in Pompeii, Anderson seems to have devised a whole new genre: historical-romance-action-disaster.

The upside of this is that there is plenty going on in the film to keep you occupied. The downside is there isn't a moment to catch your breath.

The brutal action - and the movie has plenty of it - unfolds within the first few frames, during which a little boy named Milo watches helplessly as his Celtic parents are killed by the advancing Romans, led by the vicious senator Corvus (Kiefer Sutherland).

Fast forward a decade or so, and Milo ( Game of Thrones' Kit Harington), is grown up, with killer abs, a dreamy countenance, tousled brown hair and determined eyes. He also happens to be the champion gladiator in the stable of a businessman who decides to take his pugilistic brood to Pompeii, to fight.