Prince of Persia: one movie that won’t withstand the test of time

According to recent internet chatter Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is being regarded as the best movie adaptation of a video game. If that is the case then it really says much about the quality of movies based on video games. Prince of Persia was both boring and uninteresting, with wooden acting and bloated yet unconvincing special effects. In short it was a complete mess and not worth the $10 ticket price.

Here’s the plot: in ancient Persia the king adopts a street urchin named Dastan after witnessing his bravery and kind spirit. Fifteen years later the adult Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal) leads a preemptive attack on the holy city of Alamut after the king’s brother and adviser Nizam (Ben Kingsley) reveals that the Alamut people are selling weapons to their enemies. During the attack Dastan subdues a palace guard and unknowingly obtains the Dagger of Time, which allows the user to travel back in time if the dagger is filled with the mystical sands of time. Thanks to Dastan’s ingenuity the Persians overtake the city and capture Tamina (Gemma Arterton), the Alamut princess. But at the victory celebration the Persian king is killed after donning a poisoned robe Dastan presented to him. Dastan and Tamina flee and learn that Nizam killed the king and plans to take the dagger to the sands of time so he can ensure he rules instead of his brother. The two form an uneasy alliance as they race to stop Nizam from releasing the sands and destroying the world.

While this sounds exciting the actual result is much less so. The movie was boring and lost my interest after about a half an hour. While the sequences where the dagger was used were done well, it only happens a couple of times in the movie. While it didn’t need to be used every second it feels like a cheat when it’s hardly used at all. In addition some of the effects, like the deadly vipers, look cheap and unconvincing. The computer effects looked like something that would be seen in 1990, not 2010. I also noticed there were way too many jerky jump cuts, making the viewing experience awkward.

While Jake Gyllenhaal can give engaging performances, such as in Donnie Darko and Brokeback Mountain, here he came off as annoying and dull. Not great when the character is suppose to be engaging. Gemma Arterton seemed to have one default emotion in this movie, anger. Otherwise she seemed to simply be eye candy instead of an interesting character. Alfred Molina, who played shady entrepreneur Sheik Amar, was painfully jokey and seemed more meant to portray people’s outcry on resent tax hikes then to be an actual character. And Ben Kingsley came off like any generic epic movie villain, which is a shame when you cast such a strong actor in the role.

I will say that the creators of the trailers for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time deserve an award. They managed to take a mess of a movie and recut the footage to make it look like an epic. They managed to take my $10 from me. Hopefully I can save you from losing your hard earned money. Save your cash for another trip to the theater this summer by avoiding Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.