0
0
Rating: 1 out of 5
I love playing video games. I used to play Goldeneye on the N64. I had a Sega Genius with the Sega Channel. I also had a PlayStation, but now I roll with the XBOX. I played all types of games from Madden to Sonic to any Halo game, and who can forget Grand Theft Auto. I love the shooting games like Call of Duty, and please don’t get me started on the fighting games like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. If you didn’t roll with Liu Kang, Scorpion, or Chun-Li, then I couldn’t talk to you. No matter what, video games are fantastic, and people can connect over them.
With that said, some video games shouldn’t be made into a film. Hollywood seems to love making movies out of video games, and a great majority of the time, the film fails. Actually, all of them seem to fail with a blah storyline, okay acting, and some of the most over the top special effects. Sometimes a video game doesn’t need to be made in a movie. Case in point: Super Mario Brothers, Double Dragon, and Street Fighter, to name a few.
So how does Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time stack up among video games movies? If you can get past the whitewashing of this film, it is meh. It is pretty much a video game, and you can tell it is made after a video game. It does have its funny moments and some pretty good acting, but overall, the film ends up being meh.
So, what is this wonderful game movie about? Well, the film follows Dastan (Gyllenhaal), and his royal blooded foster brothers Garsiv and Tus lead the Persian army in an attack on the sacred city of Alamut. Nizam (Kingsley), the King’s brother and closest adviser, stated that the city’s people were selling weapons to their enemies. As Garsiv decides to attack the front, Dastan chooses to lead a surprise attack with his friend Bis (Ritchie) against his brother’s orders. Dastan manages to breach the city and open the eastern gate and for the army to take the city. During the battle, Dastan defeats one of Princess Tamina’s (Arterton) guards, who was in possession of the mythical Dagger of Time. The dagger gives its owner the ability to go back in time for a short period so that the user can try to correct any mistake or redo any moment. With the city fallen, Tamina is captured and is offered as a wife for Tus, which would make the city of Alamut a part of the Persian Empire.
Hope you have kept up so far. The movie doesn’t stop there because, as the Persians celebrate their “amazing” victory, Prince Dastan is fooled into presenting a poisoned gown seemingly given to him by Tus to King Sharaman (Pickup). The gown fatally burns the king, and Prince Dastan is proclaimed the murderer. Dastan escapes the castle with Princess Tamina, and together they embark on a journey to prove Dastan’s innocence. You might ask where does the dagger come into play? Well, on the first night, Tamina attempts to kill the prince and recover the dagger, but Dastan accidentally activates the dagger and learns about its ability to rewind time for one minute and, in doing so, prevents Tamina from attacking. Armed with this new knowledge, Dastan sets out to prove his innocence and try to change time once and for all. As the pair travel through the desert, they run into Sheik Amar (Molina), who is just around for business. Soon everyone learns that the one pulling the strings is the one they most trust.
Let’s get the noticeable out of the way first. For a movie that has Persia in it, you would think it would at least have actors and actresses of Persian descent. NOPE! This movie is totally whitewashed to the fullest. It’s quite disrespectful, but hey, Hollywood will do its own thing and always justify their casting. Like Paul Money said in a skit, Hollywood is bold enough to have Meryl Streep play Harriett Tubman.
Now with that out of the way, is the movie actually any good? If you keep your expectations really low and think of it as a video game, you will probably enjoy it. It has that crazy video game feel about it, along with some of the dialogue. This is a real film made out of a video game, and there is no way around it. You will be entertained with the action. The story is meh. A dude takes a dagger, finds out dagger can move back time, and falls in love with a princess while setting everything right. That is the story, and nothing much else to it.
The action scenes are WAY over the top and pretty hilarious to watch. Watching Jake Gyllenhaal run around and swing a sword around is funny to me. Maybe it is because this was the first time seeing him this way. Well, the action scenes are pretty amusing. First, when they attack the city, we get regular fighting, and then when it seems like a finishing move comes up, or the character has to jump off a high building, the scene moves into prolonged motion to emphasize the skills the character is about to do and take. Just swing the sword and jump off the roof like an average person—no need to slow down time.
Now for the CGI and special effects. Some films do it right, and some movies that do it wrong. This film tries to make the special effects and CGI work, but it just doesn’t quite live up to what you might expect. When Dastan first presses the stone on the dagger, the effect has this weird ghost-like effect where he glows golden, and time moves backward. It just looks off and strange. The scenes are entertaining, but it just seems off.
For the acting, it’s somewhat entertaining but mostly meh. Jake Gyllenhaal as Dastan should’ve been in an info commercial for some product for building muscles. Gemma Arterton as Tamina just looked amazing and can’t get enough of her accent. Besides that, she was mostly a damsel in distress. Ben Kingsley as Prince Nizam was, huh? For an actor as talented as Kingsley, why roll with this movie? Alfred Molina, as Sheik Amar, was the most entertaining character in the whole film. That is saying something because he isn’t in the film that much.
If your goal is to watch all movies made after a video game, then have fun with this one. It isn’t excellent or outstanding, but it’s not god awful. It’s a video game movie, and the expectations should be really low. If you keep the expectations low, then you won’t be disappointed.
