Pompeii

Pompeii has to be a contender for the most frustrating film of the year.

What is a great concept and incredible location gets lost searching for what type of film it wants to be.

Part love story, part political drama, part gladiator action and part disaster movie it's too short to play all these parts successfully and so a lot is left unanswered and unfulfilled.

The romance blossoms way too quickly and there is a lot of meaty historical context that is skimmed over.

The other issue is the accents. When creating a historical film set in a foreign country, why can't the Director just address all the cast and agree on one consistent voice to, at the very least, not have the audience laughing every two seconds.

Kit Harrington starts the film as a gentrified Englishman (despite supposedly being Scottish) and ends it as Jon Snow whilst Kiefer Sutherland just sounds like he's taking the piss and that he thinks he's been cast in Austin Powers Goes To Rome.

It's a shame because there's a lot to like here. The first 20 minutes is cheese central but as soon as the volcano erupts you can't take your eyes off it.

There are some spectacular special effects shots and some epic deaths as well.

The fight scenes are also nice and brutal despite the Street Fighter-esque shot that makes every single one look like a video game.

It just lacks depth and it's all a bit obvious. The baddies are all really too bad (the slaughtering children and marrying-women-by-force type) and the goodies too good (the saving children from dying and then walking away type) and despite some good performances they can't make the script anything more than a standard action-er.

There's a 4 star disaster film fighting to get out here and a little more historical pointers and a better script could achieve that.

3 stars ***