Prince of percia film
Well, I have to do something to pass the time, don’t I?Ĭhemistry between romantic leads is an elusive thing. Or why not turn back the whole battle and defend the undefended east gate? I know, thinking again. Just think how handy that could be if, I don’t know, you were a servant charged with keeping the most valuable and dangerous object in the world out of the hands of invaders. Later, we learn that within the glass handle are the “sands of time,” and that by pressing the jeweled hilt and releasing them, you can, yes, turn back time. Wouldn’t a better plan have been to have a super-secret hiding place in the palace for such occasions? Then again, once you start thinking, who knows where it might lead? Naturally, he leaves the palace and immediately gets into a confrontation with Dastan. Tamina entrusts the dagger to a servant whose job is to keep it out of the invaders’ hands. Tamina is the guardian of Alamut’s great secret, a glass-handled dagger with magical powers. If you missed Green Zone, now’s your chance to relive the glory days of 2003.
#Prince of percia film movie#
Will anyone actually remember these names after the movie is over? After they take the city it begins to look as if their intelligence was wrong and there are no weapons, ha ha. Princess Tamina (Gemma Arterton, Clash of the Titans, Quantum of Solace) lives in the holy city of Alamut, which Tus and Garsiv attack because (a) Nizam tells them that Alamut is selling weapons to their enemies, and (b) they have never seen a movie before. You might be thinking, a party with Ben Kingsley as the villain, how bad could it be? But even Kingsley seems to be wishing he were at a different party. Then there’s the king’s brother Nizam (Ben Kingsley), whom no one would suspect is actually a traitor, unless he had seen a movie before. Here, instead of being gobsmacked by how fast Dastan moves, we’re left with how fast the editors cut from one shot to another.ĭastan is an adopted prince, an orphaned street rat whose courage and derring-do in a marketplace dust-up impresses the noble king (Ronald Pickup), who takes him into the palace along with his own sons, Garsiv (Toby Kebbell) and Tus (Richard Coyle), who sound more like TrueType fonts than characters, not that it matters. For a now-classic example of movie parkour, see the opening chase scene from Casino Royale, a sequence that shows you exactly (a) what obstacles the characters face and (b) how they surmount them, in all their jaw-dropping splendor. In a silly spectacle like this, it simply deprives us of the joy of watching the stuntman’s art, or else it merely creates the impression that we’re missing things the stuntman isn’t really doing anyway. Instead, Newell (or his editors) assemble action scenes out of countless fragments of close-up motion devoid of context.Ĭhaotic action editing I can accept as a stylistic choice in a Bourne or Batman film. If only director Mike Newell ( Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) would let us watch it.
Today this is called parkour, but once upon a time it was just what Jackie Chan did. As a leading man, Gyllenhaal succeeds only in reminding you (a) how much Brendan Fraser or Johnny Depp or Angelina Jolie brings to the party, and (b) how much more you would like being at that party.ĭastan moves like the Jackie Chan of ancient Persia, leaping, climbing and swinging around like, well, a video-game avatar. Gaming fans may enjoy watching a beefed-up Jake Gyllenhaal ( Brokeback Mountain) impersonate the acrobatic prince from the game, here called Dastan. It’s about as close to a non-movie as you can get for $150 million. It’s not painful to watch, nor is it much fun. In 116 minutes, there are maybe six minutes that might be sort of memorable, although it probably helps if you take notes. Instead, Prince of Persia barely makes an impression, like footprints in the sand during a sandstorm. If the silly story makes some sort of sense - if we can follow the rules and care about the stakes - better still. A charismatic hero, some chemistry with a love interest, a hissable villain, some energetic action scenes, eye-candy special effects and we’re potentially in business. It will be nonsense, but it could be rollicking nonsense. When a movie is called Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, you expect to be The Mummy meets Aladdin by way of Tomb Raider, which it more or less is. Not even a distant roll of thunder or a shadow of a stormcloud, except in the Jerry Bruckheimer Films logo at the start of the film. Bruckheimer’s latest Disney production, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, is based on a long-running video game franchise.