Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Hoyts, Melbourne Central 15/06/2010
Status: Behind by a whopping 19.4 films
My mate Kate and I eschewed the typical girls-night-out awfulness (a la Sex and the City 2) and signed up for Prince of Persia instead.
Prince of Persia is exactly what I would have expected from Disney, “super-producer” Jerry Bruckheimer (quotation marks completely intention) and a video game adaptation: it’s exceedingly stupid and quite a lot of fun.
This is normally the point where I would recount the plot, but to do so would perhaps give the impression that a) this film has a plot and that b) it is in any way relevant to the action of the film.
The video game action legacy is clear - there’s lots of free-running and gymnastic-style leaping about - and for the most part, these are the most successful action elements. The fight scenes, sadly, are less convincing.
Despite a little attempt at social relevance (commenting on the Iraq invasion and fictitious weapons of mass destruction), Prince of Persia is what it is: an absurd plot with ridiculous characters, way too much CG and some mediocre performances (and some not bad ones, too, mostly from where you’d expect - BEN KINSGLEY, ALFRED MOLINA and RICHARD COYLE (Jeff from TV’s Coupling). But for all that ho-hum, I had a disproportionately good time. I think it’s mostly JAKE GYLLENHAAL’s doing.
Gyllenhaal does an excellent job of jauntily delivering some dire dialogue and of creating the illusion of chemistry with a fairly uninspiring leading lady (GEMMA ATERTON). He gets his shirt off a bit too, which never hurts. I think the girls going to Sex and the City 2 definitely backed the wrong horse on that score.
