Prince of Persia

I've been pretty neglectful of my blog due to exams. So I'm back now, and to cap off the end of exams I saw Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time last night.


Basically the only video game-movies out there are all pretty bad. I've only seen Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (both of which I loved), and Street Fighter (which is terrible). I say most adaptations are bad because most adaptations are made by Uwe Boll. Enough said. No matter how much shit the guy doles out someone keeps giving him money to make movies. 


So here's the first video game adaptation with a decent production value. I'm happy to say that it's not half-bad either. In all the Prince games so far, the Prince never has a name; he's simply referred to as 'The Prince'. So of course, they had to give him a name. 


Jake Gyllenhaal plays Dastan (pretty lame name IMO), a young street urchin who happens to be seen by the king of Persia as he helps an urchin boy out of a sticky situation. The king is struck by Dastan's character and nobility and takes him in to become a Prince of Persia (dun dun dun). Fast-forward several years later, and Dastan, accompanied by his 'brothers' (they're obviously not blood-related), Tus (Dastan and Tus...) and Garsiv (seriously?), as well as the Vizier of Persia and the King's brother, Nizam (okay, seriously, who thought of these names?), finds himself leading the Persian army to victory against the holy city of Alamut. Now here's where it gets funny. The Persians attack Alamut because they receive 'false information' about Alamut manufacturing weapons for Persia's enemies. Okay, now just wait. It is later revealed that Alamut houses the Dagger of Time and the Sands of Time, which is what the antagonist is actually after. I actually love the allegory to Iraq and the WMDs. 


So anyway, Dastan and the Persians take Alamut, and shortly after Dastan finds himself framed for the murder of the King and fleeing from his very own family with the beautiful princess Tamina (Gemma Arterton). 


I'm going to spoil the surprise antagonist for you. Why? Because it's so damn obvious that he's the villain as soon as you see the first shot of him. But how, you ask. Firstly, he's the VIZIER. Who is always evil in fictional stories set in India or Persia: the Vizier. Read Asterix and the Flying Carpet. You will never look at a Vizier in a good light again. However, the main factor is: the guy's bald. Vizier Nizam, played by Ben Kingsley, is bald, and that is what makes him the villain. Baldness equals villainy. Remember that.


Onwards. The most surprising thing about this movie is that the plot is actually good. Like, it stands up for itself and is really interesting. It's a little clichéd but I thought it worked really well, and Nizam's motives are pretty well conveyed (by the way, Sir Ben Kingsley plays a badass villain). There are a couple of plotholes that I spotted while watching it, but the sequences they occur in happen so fast that it's really difficult to pick them up at all. I thought the special effects were beautiful. Pretty much any scene containing sand was beautiful. 


There's a reasonable amount of humour (amusingly often directed at the government's fiendish habits of collecting taxes), although the acting is a bit sub-par. I'll have to say that the opening lines of the early scene where the Persians are about to attack Alamut just had me going 'Oh my God this is going to be such - a - drag.' The action in that section of the film definitely made up for the cheesy acting though, but thankfully the dialogue got better as it went. At first I was doubtful about Gyllenhaal playing the Prince but he actually pulls it off pretty spectacularly, although I still wish they'd picked someone that could do more of his own stunts; there are simply too many shots where we're looking at the Prince's back because it's a stuntman doing all the parkour. Oh yeah, the parkour's great too. But... some more of it would have been nice. 


Something the film is a bit too full of is incessant drabble being fired from Arterton's mouth. She's great and she's hot and all, but oh my God is her dialogue annoying. BLAH BLAH BLAH I'M A SPOILT PRINCESS THAT NEEDS HER PRADA HANDBAGS AND HAS A REALLY HIGH VOICE. Far out. Apart from her there are some really nice characters to go along with the Prince and Nizam. While the dude that plays Garsiv reminded me a little too much of Taylor Lautner, I thought the dude that played Tus was quite proficient. Overall the film's acting is a bit hit-and-miss, which is pretty much exactly what you expect from a video game adaptation. 


My final complaint will be directed at the editing. It will therefore be directed at Mike Newell, the director, who also happened to be responsible for the train wreck known as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the film. The editing is too scrappy. Seriously. Jeez. The action sequences are good only because of the actors in it and the special effects; they could've been great if not for the spontaneous cuts and amateur editing. They just seem rushed. And that's not a surprise, considering this is a Mike Newell film. Go away Newell. I will never forgive you for the shit you vomited out in place of a Harry Potter film. 


Rant complete. Yeah, so Prince of Persia was actually pretty fun. The film stales a bit throughout the midsection, but the action sequences are really cool (there's a particular one between this huge Numidian warrior and an assassin, and they're only using throwing knives) and are well complemented by sublime CGI. The acting is hit-and-miss, but the performances by Gyllenhaal and Kingsley are near-flawless. This is the most professional video game-to-film adaptation I've seen so far (I maintain that Mortal Kombat is still the best adaptation I've seen so far), and it was surprisingly satisfying. 


Recommended watch, but go in with relatively low expectations. 3.5/5. 


P.S. I actually saw Robin Hood a couple of weeks back and was too lazy to write about it, I need to do that. Blah.