Pompeii

Summit Entertainment | Release Date: February 21, 2014

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

39	METASCORE Generally unfavorable reviews based on 33 Critics

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

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Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriFeb 23, 2014

More fun than any civilization’s fiery extinction should ever be, Paul W.S. Anderson’s Pompeii 3-D is gloriously exciting kitsch – a poor man’s "Titanic" crossed with an even poorer man’s "Gladiator." Read full review

Los Angeles TimesGary GoldsteinFeb 20, 2014

Part sword-and-sandal spectacle, part disaster epic, Pompeii accomplishes its ambitious agenda to largely engrossing effect. Read full review

The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyFeb 20, 2014

Fortunately, Pompeii’s second half is tailor-made for Anderson’s established skill set, unfolding over a matter of hours, with many scenes set in and under a gladiatorial amphitheatre that recalls the arenas, subterranean tunnels, and cavernous vessels of Anderson’s best movies. Read full review

RogerEbert.comGlenn KennyFeb 21, 2014

This is a surprisingly old-fashioned disaster movie. In point of fact its old-fashioned-ness is really the only surprising thing about this eye-popping 3D spectacle. Read full review

Boston GlobeTom RussoFeb 20, 2014

Anderson’s stab at rendering the Mount Vesuvius catastrophe with a 3-D “Titanic” gloss. Read full review

McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreFeb 19, 2014

What Anderson delivers this one time is a genuine spectacle, a gladiator movie with a volcano in the middle of it. Read full review

The New York TimesMiriam BaleFeb 20, 2014

Mr. Anderson displays his mastery as a director in the sword-fighting scenes... But the glares and eye rolls that bookend these scenes are what make this film both GIF-ready and campy fun. Read full review

Village VoiceAlan ScherstuhlFeb 20, 2014

Anderson distinguishes himself as the rare action director who shows us real bodies in real space in real reaction to each other, who prizes legibility over quick-cut dazzlement, who stages his fights with comic-book zeal rather than puffed-up graphic-novel miserableness. Read full review

VarietyPeter DebrugeFeb 19, 2014

While more coherent than much of Anderson’s recent work, the film proves less successful at combining destruction and damsel-in-distress storytelling within the same frame, serving up blurry images of Milo trying to rescue Cassia while the city crumbles around them. Read full review

Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanFeb 21, 2014

Most of the film is a chintzy but watchable B-movie knockoff of "Gladiator," with Kit Harington, the English actor from "Game of Thrones," mustering very little in the way of facial expressivity in the role of Milo. Read full review

TimeRichard CorlissFeb 23, 2014

A wildly flawed but fitfully diverting picture. Read full review

The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceyFeb 20, 2014

No doubt the audiences in the Coliseum would offer a thumbs-up to the scale of the destruction, though even they might have had some quibbles about the special effects, which, too often, resemble a very large pile of melting crayons. Read full review

ReelViewsJames BerardinelliFeb 20, 2014

Pompeii is a big, glorious, cheesy mess. Read full review

USA TodayClaudia PuigFeb 20, 2014

The result is a generic saga with a cast of forgettable one-dimensional characters Read full review

New York PostLou LumenickFeb 20, 2014

A campy guilty pleasure that serves up a “Gladiator’’ knockoff as an appetizer to the impressively flame-filled main course. Read full review

Miami HeraldRene RodriguezFeb 20, 2014

The movie is so grand in scale that you can’t help surrender to the spectacle, even if the stuff that’s going on with the people in the film is often close to risible. Read full review

CineVueAmon WarmannMay 3, 2014

Pompeii make tick all the necessary movie checkboxes, but its execution is unoriginal and uninspired. Read full review

The TelegraphRobbie CollinMay 3, 2014

Anderson’s Pompeii doesn’t sweat the human stuff. His camera is mostly trained on the big picture: billowing smoke, tidal-waves, fireballs streaking through the sky. What’s happening to the people on the ground doesn’t matter, so long as we’re aware that 95 percent of them are being squashed or torched. Read full review

Total FilmKen McIntyreApr 28, 2014

While it offers spectacular CGI devastation and a chiselled hero, Pompeii is so soulless and empty that you won’t shed any tears when the ‘cano blows its top. Read full review

EmpireOwen WilliamsApr 28, 2014

Over-reaching and unintentionally amusing, this is straight-to-video quality inexplicably delivered at blockbuster scale. A thunderous volca-NO. Read full review

Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovFeb 26, 2014

Pompeii delivers the goods – well, at least during its final 20 minutes. Read full review

The DissolveKeith PhippsFeb 20, 2014

Pompeii just feels like an excuse to rain digital terror on screaming extras. There’s much to see here, but little to feel, and even less to remember. Read full review

Washington PostStephanie MerryFeb 20, 2014

Paul W.S. Anderson, best known for the “Resident Evil” franchise and 2011’s “The Three Musketeers,” creates harrowing simulations of the disaster. It’s enough to make you want him to ditch the story altogether. Read full review

Film.comJordan HoffmanFeb 20, 2014

The first sixty minutes of Pompeii are awful, bordering on unwatchable... The final forty-five minutes of the movie however are, by sheer force of will, irrefutably entertaining. At least there’s raining death in the form of fireballs smashing up the place. Read full review

NPRIan BuckwalterFeb 21, 2014

Anderson's repeated hurling of flaming volcanic projectiles directly at the screen — the dominant feature of the latter third of Pompeii — is firmly in the lovably trashy spirit of the '50s drive-in. Read full review

Arizona RepublicBarbara VanDenburghFeb 20, 2014

It fails to offer as single compelling character as a sacrifice to the angry volcano. Read full review

The Hollywood ReporterJordan MintzerFeb 19, 2014

While Anderson excels in the film’s many moments of digital doom-and-gloom, he can’t deliver a single authentic emotion between the two star-crossed leads, leaving us with a sooty aftertaste of having sat through one very loud rendition of Titanic in togas. Read full review

Portland OregonianStephen WhittyFeb 22, 2014

It's a spectacle, all right -- but mostly just of a lot of people, some of whom should know better, making an utter ash of themselves. Read full review

San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleFeb 20, 2014

If you think of Pompeii as a ride, a conveyance for special effects, and not anything resembling an emotional experience, indifference can almost be a good thing. Read full review

Slant MagazineR. Kurt OsenlundFeb 20, 2014

Shockingly, the violent release of smoke, fire, and meteoric debris is positioned more as a climactic afterthought than as the main attraction. Read full review

Time OutJoshua RothkopfFeb 21, 2014

There’s not enough villainy—nor lip-smacking comeuppance—to justify a smiting by ash or falling column. The movie in your head melts ten times better. Read full review

The PlaylistKevin JagernauthFeb 20, 2014

When you plunk down your $12, you will get the destruction you were promised. But it's too bad it's such a repetitive, unengaging, glaringly digital experience and worse than that, you'll have to sit through the disaster that is the rest of movie. Read full review

New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierFeb 20, 2014

It’s impossible to find anything that grabs you in Pompeii. This lumpen adventure with a misguided romance buries anything in the disaster-flick genre that might have been a blast. Read full review