Movies based on video games have historically been about as successful as video game adaptation of movies: not very.  Still, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time seemed destined to be an exception.  After all, video games nowadays are basically interactive movies themselves and the adventures of a magical-dagger-wielding action hero seemed a perfect fit for the big screen.  Additionally, the movie is co-produced by Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer who previously succeeded in turning a theme park ride into a hit swashbuckling adventure.  Sadly, Prince of Persia never manages to get its exciting concept off the ground.

The prince of the title is Dastan, but he’s not a prince by blood.  An orphan handpicked off the street by the Persian king, Dastan is raised in the palace and becomes quite a cunning warrior.  When his elder brother leads an attack on a religious city, it is Dastan who breaks through the walls and leads in the troops.  There he stumbles upon a mystical dagger that was hidden within.  Thanks to some mystical sand that is kept in the dagger’s handle, it can transport its user back in time.  Imagine what a weapon like that can do if it falls into the wrong hands.

Charged with keeping the dagger safe is the beautiful and feisty Princess Tamina, and when Dastan is accused of murder the two of them go on the run together.  She plans to return the dagger to its resting place where it will be safe, while Dastan wants to use its powers to prove his innocence. This provides the conflict for a screwball comedy romance that gets very repetitive: she steals the dagger, he takes it back, they nearly kiss, rinse, and repeat.

The leads are Jake Gyllenhaal and Gemma Arterton, neither of which are truly effective.  Gyllenhaal has done a good job of bulking up for the role, but his accent goes in and out as much as Kevin Costner’s did in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.  Arterton also looks good, but she doesn’t do much to separate herself from the hundred other saucy female princesses we’ve seen.  Both get way too many slow-motion glamor shots.

They are joined by an adequate but unimpressive group of mostly unknowns.  The other names in the film are Ben Kingsley and Alfred Molina.  Molina takes full advantage of the opportunity to ham it up a bit, but Kingsley just looks bored throughout the entire movie.

Perhaps most disappointing about Prince of Persia is that the action scenes are nothing memorable.  Only the opening attack sequence has any stunts worth talking about as the climactic sequences near the end get bogged down in subpar special effects.  The film also fails to utilize the device that is the main drawing point of the games: the dagger’s time-traveling powers.  In the game, the player would use the dagger to slow down the action in a manner akin to The Matrix’s bullet-time in order to defeat a number of enemies.  That technique in never utilized in the movie as the time-warping power of the dagger is mainly used for a major plot cheat.

In the opening action scene there are also some clever camera tricks that are sure to delight fans of gaming.  At a moment when Dastan and his men must open two castle gates, the camera first swings abruptly to one gate, then the other, before quickly returning to the characters.  In video games, this technique is used to give the idea a player of what he must do next and it is a nice inclusion in the movie.  Unfortunately, that’s about the end of the clever camera work and there is some really poor camera work throughout the rest of the movie.  At times, it seemed as if the actors failed to keep their heads between the sun and the camera leaving the audience staring directly into the sun while the now invisible characters continue their dialogue.  A stylistic choice maybe, but not a very successful one.

The potential for a great action-adventure movie is there within the fabric of Prince of Persia, but unfortunately it hits all the wrong notes.  This is a perfect candidate for one of those reboots that Hollywood is buzzing about nowadays, but until that time we’ll just have to wait for some other movie to do for video games what Pirates of the Caribbean did for theme park rides.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of violence and action.”  This movie probably could have gotten away with a simple PG rating as there is very little to keep people away.  It is a Disney movie, after all.

Courtesy of a local publicist, Jeff attended a promotional screening of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time