One of the very few computer action games I got into was Prince of Persia, which involved a lot of running and jumping in a palace, with nice graphics by early 1990s standards. Coincidentally, this movie has the same name as that video game. Oh sure, the credits claim that the one is actually based on the other, and the game’s creator, Jordan Mechner even gets a story credit. But it’s not really any more based on it than Pretty in Pink was based on the Psychedelic Furs song. More like if the Disney people went to the guys who wrote the remake of The Uninvited and one of the guys who wrote Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights and said, can you write us a generic action thriller with a romantic angle called Prince of Persia? And it was done.
Of course, it’s very professionally done. The director is Mike Newell, who made maybe the best of the Harry Potter movies, Goblet of Fire. And the cast, led by an impressively beefed-up Jake Gyllenhaal, features Oscar winner Ben Kingsley (as the prince’s influential uncle). Gyllenhaal is the title character, a common boy adopted by the king and fated to lead the preemptive invasion of a holy city thought, though not proven, to have extremely powerful weapons. I have no idea whose idea it was to make the film an Iraq war allegory, but there it is, although most twelve-year-old boys will fail to notice.
The main plotline is the usual fantasy-film nonsense about a magic object that, if captured, will unleash a mighty wave of CGI effects the likes of which have not been seen since the last big-budget fantasy film. This is really too bad. The video game doesn’t supply much of a plot for the movie, but it does suggest a film in which running and jumping in a palace would play more of a role. There’s a little, but the occasional parkour sequences don’t top the ones in District B13 or Casino Royale.
As for the characters, they’re pretty standard. The ancient city is led by a plucky princess (Gemma Arterton). Ever since Star Wars, I guess, the plucky princess is a requisite character for this sort of movie. In the course of five minutes of screen time, she saves the prince, then tries to kill him. She is adversary and love interest, damsel in distress and woman of action, whatever. Meanwhile, the tone of the movie shifts from straight action to Romancing the Stone-style comedic adventure, as if different scenes had been assigned to different writers. (And indeed, several are credited.)
The result isn’t incoherent, but is disjointed. On the bright side are minor time-travel tricks, an impressive re-creation of some real sites in ancient Persia, and medium-good swordfighting. Not good enough to recommend though.
IMDB link
reviewed 5/27/10
No comments:
Post a Comment