Susan Granger’s review of “Prince of Persia: Sands of Time” (Walt Disney)
During the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood, neighborhood theaters routinely showed two movies, known as double-features. The first had a big budget, good writers, major stars and was the primary box-office draw, while the second, or B-movie, had a more pedestrian roster, nominal artistic merit and usually fell into the sci-fi, western, exploitation, horror or sword ‘n’ sorcery genre.
Now the B-movie has become a big-budget, effects-laden video game-turned-action adventure with a minimal, if mystical storyline and a multitude of swirling sandstorms and senseless chase sequences, offering gainful employment to innumerable camels and costumed ‘stunt’ doubles.
In the sixth century in an ancient land called Persia (now known as Iran), a brave young street orphan, Dastan, was adopted by wise-and-noble King Sharaman (Ronald Pickup) as his third son. As the story begins, now-grown Prince Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal) assists his two older brothers (Richard Coyle, Toby Kebbell) in an ill-advised siege of the religious city of Alamut. Into Dastan’s hands falls the fabled and powerful Dagger of Time, which pouty Princess Tamina (Gemma Arterton) is charged with protecting.
Swashbuckling Jake Gyllenhaal is buffed-up and into the kind of acrobatic battle once waged by Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn, while one could become mesmerized watching for movement in British Gemma Arterton’s over-Botox’d stiff upper lip. Ben Kingsley is a scheming, dastardly villain and Alfred Molina adds humor as money-grubbing Sheikh Amar, presiding over ostrich races and quipping about high taxes.
Based on Jordan Mechner’s 1989 video game, it’s simplistically written by Boaz Yakin, Doug Miro and Carlo Bernard, indifferently directed by Mike Newell (“Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire”), scenically photographed by John Seale and enthusiastically over-produced by Jerry Bruckheimer (“Pirates of the Caribbean”), delivering another cheesy blow to contemporary Middle Eastern diplomacy by alluding to allegedly hidden weapons of mass destruction.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Prince of Persia: Sands of Time” is a frenetic 5, an innocuous, old-fashioned B-movie that seems destined for a satisfying afterlife on dvd.
