My memory of the video game Prince of Persia involves jumping, jumping over pits of spikes, falling into pits of spikes, falling again, and then quitting to play Goldrunner instead.
A rich, meaty narrative to base a movie on, to be sure, but impossible to bring to the big screen so long as human jumping technology lagged behind the digital. We had the spikes, but where could we find a man with the legular fortitude to jump over them? Hopes ran high when Hollywood scientists, building on the technology that brought us Dolly the sheep, spliced human and amphibian DNA in preparation for Frogger: The Movie.
-- Local show times, theaters, trailer.
Unfortunately, the project fell apart when someone forgot to refill the subjects' water bottle prior to a three-day weekend. Leaping-based franchises everywhere were reluctantly shelved. It wasn't until the 21st century that the invention of parkour yanked us roughly into the future of jumping, paving the way for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.
After leading his older brothers to victory over a treacherous city, prince Jake Gyllenhaal is the hero of Persia. His brother Richard Coyle offers him a robe to give their father as a victory gift, but during the celebration, the robe poisons the old man.
Framed for the king's murder, Gyllenhaal escapes with the aid of captured princess Gemma Arterton, the guardian of a time-bending dagger Gyllenhaal found during the battle. If it falls into Coyle's hands, he'll make himself the mightiest king in history and destroy the world in the process.
Firmly in touch with its roots, Prince of Persia dishes up all the leaping, tumbling, and climbing you could ever wish for. And, well, it's kind of cool. Director Mike Newell doesn't seem to have any special visual style, but he brings workmanlike competence to the acrobatic and diverse action scenes.
"Competent" may not sound like strong praise, but considering most movies aren't, that puts it ahead of the curve. Prince of Persia's fundamental all rightness isn't limited to its action, either. How's the acting? Satisfactory! And the plot? Decent! How about that ethnically diverse cast featuring believably Persian actors? Well...less satisfactory. This movie's so white the king's played by a guy named Ronald Pickup. The only way to get whiter than that is to replace him with Cornelius AmericanEagle-SlideGuitar.
Whatever, at least it's got ostrich racing.
It's also got a level of intrigue that transcends the okay. Its twists don't exactly cure the asthma of the world with their freshness in fact, I suspect the writers have been cribbing from a little-known play called Hamlet but they're paced well, building on each other logically and without confusion.
Until the climax, that is. Don't ask me what happened with that big shiny time-stream and the stabbing and the fixing. Prince of Persia's scant mythology makes the least sense at the moment it's most important, but strangely, it doesn't matter. You expect things to get nonsensical when you're screwing around with time.
Yet the ending itself is kinda nice, and aside from some lamely anachronistic comic relief from the usually dependable Alfred Molina, the bulk of Prince of Persia is a fun enough ride. It's never spectacular, but it's never overly dumb, either. Call it "barely good."
Grade: C+
