Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. 111 mins. Rated M. Directed by Mike Newell. Written by Boaz Yakin, Doug Miro and Carlo Bernard from a story by Jordan Mechner.
Since the dawn of cinema’s silent era, audiences have delighted in swashbuckling adventures set in exotic, faraway lands. Hollywood’s global influence today was partly forged on the success of films (such as 1924’s The Thief of Bagdad) freely adapted from One Thousand and One Nights – a collection of stories featuring the now instantly recognisable characters of ‘Aladdin’, ‘Sinbad’ and ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves’.
When the King of Persia witnesses a young street urchin’s rare act of bravery, he adopts him into the royal household where it is hoped his selfless courage and inventiveness will influence their shared destiny. Years later, the grown-up Prince Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal), reluctantly joins his brothers on a quest to invade the Holy City of Alumut where, it is believed, an army of traitors are preparing to wage war against the royal family. Instead, once inside the walls of the great city, Dastan discovers the existence of a magical dagger that has the power to change the course of history – and in the wrong hands, the results could be disastrous.
In spite of the work of three of Hollywood’s top editors – Martin Walsh (Clash of the Titans), Michael Kahn (Raiders of the Lost Ark) and Mick Audsley (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) – Prince of Persia, somewhat alarmingly, doesn’t ever entirely hold together. While Newell (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) obviously has an incredibly tight grip on the forced, flabby and clumsy proceedings – it still manages to flounder all over the place in an exemplary display of style over substance.
Fortunately, that ‘style’ is wonderfully adequate, and the computer-generated set pieces – particularly the early aerial shots of the great Persian cities and the film’s climactic underground sequence – are great. Art Directors Luca Tranchino (The Aviator), Marco Trentini (Kingdom of Heaven) and Production Designer Wolf Kroeger (The Last of the Mohicans) account superbly for the film’s visual flair, while Australian Cinematographer John Seale (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) keeps us tantilisingly up close and personal to all the frantically whiz-bang, over-produced goings on.
Gyllenhaal, whose career to date has consisted of rivetting performances in films as diverse as Donnie Darko, Jarhead, Brokeback Mountain and Brothers, is unhapppily miscast as the pumped, swashbuckling young Prince, while Gemma Arterton’s faux Princess grandeur exists almost entirely of lots of stomping and striding all over the place – obviously due to an almost palpable fear that she will go entirely unnoticed at the expense of the scenery. The film’s patchiness is not helped, either, by the noticeable absence of any genuine chemistry between its two young romantic leads.
When the real stars of the show are a tax-shy entrepreneur (a fabulous Alfred Molina who appears to be acting in a totally different movie altogether) and his suicidal Ostrich, you know you’re in trouble.
This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspapers Group and was published in the print edition of the Geraldton Guardian.
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