Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a poor homeless child wandering the streets of Persia that’s been adopted into the royal family of Persia. After information comes to the knowledge of Tus (Richard Coyle) that a sacred city is arming Persian enemies secretly Persia attacks and holds the city. There Dastan finds the mystical dagger that can turn back time for a short period, but this only happens in the eyes of the one who’s holding the dagger. After being ousted by the royal family Dastan must solve this conspiracy plot that’s taking place in the Persian royal family while on this adventure film through the sands of the Arabian Desert and more.
Let’s start by stating the obvious; this is an adaptation of a huge video-game franchise that started in the late 80s and re-emerged via UbiSoft in 2003 with the video game: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. To date, there hasn’t been a good video-game to film adaptation. Which I find mind boggling since it’s one of the easiest genres to create in film and make fun; i.e. the action-adventure genre, which most video-game adaptations fall into. Until now that is.
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time isn’t a fantastic film, but it definitely is a fun movie. It’s fun in the same sense that Pirates of the Caribbean is a fun movie, and I say this with all truth and honesty. Especially as someone who walked into this movie with the lowest of expectations since the track record (as mentioned above) of video-game adaptations have had at the cinema. Boaz Yakin and Doug Miro, the screenwriters, knew how to meld the action and adventure genre in such a way that you have fun watching it. Yes, maybe if I paid too much attention to Jake Gyllenhaal, Ben Kingsley and Gemma Arterton’s horrible acting then I definitely would be horribly annoyed. But I think the same thing applies to films like The Mummy (1999) but just like that movie it ended up working for me.
For me what always elevates these somewhat trashy films to just unrelenting enjoyable cinematic experiences is usually the fun minor characters. In this movie we have Sheik Amar (Alfred Molina), a savvy business man who all he wants is to be in the black and out of sight of the tax man. He’ll do anything if a profit is in sight and for that I love him the same way how we love Jack Sparrow (from Pirates of the Caribbean) and Beni (from The Mummy). They add the little comedic moments that makes the movie amuse us so much.
Definitely not a perfect film, but worth a matinee price at least. The best part of it however is that it proves that a video-game to film adaptation can be good; which we haven’t seen yet. I do still find it massively hysterical that whenever there’s a movie from this region and time in history all the characters come out with British accents.
IMDB says 6.8/10
Rotten Tomatoes says 39%
I say 6.5/10
I hate how ancient/foreign=vaguely British too.
Nice review, then.
I was sort of vaguely horrified by how bad Gyllenhaal's "British" accent was, but I agree with your general take on the film. I enjoyed Alfred Molina's character, but I think his absolute flatness can get a bit tiresome after a while. The screenwriters could have come up with even one more side for him; he did an excellent job considering the dialogue that he had to work with. I think they were able to really capture the "world" of the video game — all the stunt work that Jake put in helped, I'm sure. (His British accent may not have been fantastic, but his abs sure were.) One of my favourite shots is when he swan dived off the top of the Eastern gate; I've never played Prince of Persia, but it captured the feel of the swan dives in Assassin's Creed / AC II. Anyway, it's not quite PIRATES, but it's certainly an improvement over my similarly low expectations going in. And Gemma Atherton, though her acting career is unlikely to take off, will certainly make a pretty "Disney princess."
Prince of Persia is definitely one of the best movies this year.**-