Meanwhile, Corvus too lands in Pompeii as the Senator of the Emperor Titus and is the deciding factor for investments from Rome. He craftily gets Severus to hand over his daughter in marriage to him.
Milo arrives in Pompeii on the eve of the Vinalia festival and is flaunted to the citizens. The next day, he is expected to fight the local champion - a massive black slave named Atticus (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) who is nearly one last death-match away from earning his freedom.
With deadly sword fights in the gladiator's arena, the love triangle, inclusive of horse chases and the rumbling Vesuvius followed by a killer tsunami, gives thrust to the narration that keeps you spell-bound and glued to your seat.
As far as the performances are concerned, there is nothing extraordinary. The characters are immediately recognizable as sympathetic or not, and on the whole, there is not very much complexity in character development.
Though the romance could be generic and the gladiator fights seem to be borrowed lavishly from films like "Gladiator" and "The Legend of Hercules", there is some freshness in the action set pieces. The sword fights as well as the chases are well devised and choreographed.
