Kurt Loder Reviews Pompeii

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Impact Pictures

In a nutshell: Mount Vesuvius, a volcano in southern Italy, erupted in 79 AD, obliterating the nearby city of Pompeii and leaving the baked corpses of its residents preserved in thick coats of volcanic ash…That's about it. Given the swift finality of this event, any movie about it must consist largely of prologue. And so the writers of the new movie Pompeii have devised a love story, played out amid much gladiatorial combat, to lead us up to the crowning cataclysm. Kurt Loder calls it fantasy schlock with bombastic digital effects.