An average movie

Honestly, I wasn't expecting much from this flick but since Nick, my step-son, was really eager to check it, I bought the dvd to watch the damned thing with him. Well, it definitely had some potential and there is no doubt that they could make a great movie about this historical event but this movie was obviously not the one fulfilling those expectations (in fact, at some point, not so long ago, Roman Polanski was working on his own version starring Orlando Bloom and Scarlett Johansson but he had dropped this project because of a possible screen actors guild strike at the time. Now, that's a movie I would have been really interested in). Anyway, as already pointed out by other critics, it was pretty much a mix of 'Gladiator' with 'Titanic', even with a dash of 'The Horse Whisperer'. Indeed, you get once again an impossible love story and suddenly, everything is turned upside down by some massive disaster. How original... On top of that, I can’t believe they used again the whole gimmick of the slave-turned-gladiator who turns out to be some kind of super warrior. I mean, seriously, they couldn't come up with something else?!? To conclude, at least, the eruption of the Mount Vesuvius did look good but that was the only interesting thing about this flick and I don't think it is really worth a look.

5/10