Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
5/30/10
Time keeps on slippin', slippin',
slippin' into the future, and one of the great draws of the time travel
genre is the fantasy that we could go back, set right what once went wrong,
and return to a “fixed” present. Alas, bound by the laws of physics
as we currently understand them, all we can do is try to learn from our
mistakes and fix our errors without the ability to wipe them away, just
like the new time travel-themed sword and sorcery adventure Prince of
Persia: The Sands of Time. Prince gets off to an
abominable start, utterly failing to ground us in its world or characters
and badly miscalculating the nature of its central romance. But starting
about 30 minutes in, bit by bit, scene by scene, director Mike Newell and
his army of writers correct course, and by the time this video game-inspired
extravaganza reaches its conclusion, it's firing on all cylinders and then
some. Fronted by an utterly game performance from a buffed-out Jake
Gyllenhaal and a world class comic relief turn by Alfred Molina, Prince
promises a great time for fantasy adventure fans who can forgive it a multitude
of early sins.
In the 6th Century, Persian
King Sharaman (Ronald Pickup) has sent an army abroad led by his brother
Nizam (Ben Kinglsey) and three sons: Tus (Richard Coyle) will be
the next king, Garsiv (Toby Kebbell) is next in line after him, and Dastan
(Jake Gyllenhaal) was a homeless orphan adopted by the King. A spy
has returned with an intercepted crate of weapons that suggests the sacred
city of Alamut is arming their enemies. Dastan smells a rat, but
when Tus decides to attack, he leads the charge and soon the city and its
noble Princess Tamina (Gemma Arterton) belong to Persian forces.
Sharaman arrives to protest the invasion of a holy city, and while Tus
searches for those elusive weapon forges that would prove his actions legitimate,
he tasks Dastan with asking the King to approve a marriage between Tus
and the Princess and delivering his a sacred prayer robe as a gift.
The robe is poisoned, and the King dies: Dastan is suspected and
must flee the city, with Tamina in tow: she's only with him to get
her hands on a dagger he took from a fleeing soldier, one with magical
powers. Press a button on the handle and it releases the Sands of
Time, which allow the holder to travel a short distance backwards in time.
Their journey takes them into a fabled valley of renegade slaves that is
in fact just a legend cooked up by Sheik Amar (Alfred Molina) to keep the
tax collectors away from his gambling empire. But the Sheik and his
right-hand knife-thrower Seso (Steve Toussaint) recognize Dastan and the
price on his head, forcing them to escape into the dessert where they're
tracked by Hassansins, a band of supernatural assassins hired by the man
behind the King's murder. Tamina and Dastan must protect the dagger
against all these forces before it unleashes all the Sands of Time from
the giant hourglass that contains them, turning back all of creation and
ending the world as they know it.
As I mentioned, Prince
of Persia does NOT get off to a promising start. A flashback
sequence that reveals how young Dastan's “courage” inspired the King is
so lame I still can't figure out what courageous act he witnessed.
Because the attack on Alamut seems ethically wrong, I couldn't get behind
the battle scenes or the Persian characters we're supposed to be rooting
for. And Tamina couldn't be more off-putting out of the gate, from
the seemingly three dozen dialog references to the fact that she's the
most beautiful woman in the world (Arterton is attractive, don't get me
wrong, but let's not get crazy here) to the script's early contention that
she and Dastan are a regular Tracy and Hepburn while all the time they
spend leaving each other to die makes them seem more like Hope and Crosby.
The writers (Boaz Yakin,
Doug Miro and Carlo Bernard are credited with a script based on a story
by Prince of Persia video game creator Jordan Mechner) have kept
some of the main characters and story beats from their source (which I
haven't played), but their tale actually pulls some amusingly unmistakable
elements from the Iraq war. Tus' search for the Weapon Forges of
Mass Destruction is a hoot and a half, while a Cheneyesque bald guy gives
him intentionally poor council as part of a master plan to change history
and become King himself. If I were Amar, I wouldn't want my taxes
going to prop up this Persian government either!
But things pick up in a big
way when Molina's Sheik Amar shows up: a 6th-Century Tea Partier
who disdains taxes above all else, he runs an outrageous empire built on
ostrich racing. The script tosses him all the best lines, but Molina
is still an utter delight in the role. When he explains to us that
ostriches are given to suicidal tendencies, you can feel his pain as he
keeps suicide watch on a prized bird. He and Toussaint add much needed
spunk to a movie that's taken some very painful pains to get its plot wheels
in motion. Once they stop exchanging painful banter and actually
start to bond, Gyllenhaal and Arterton make a likable couple, and Dastan's
efforts to persuade his brothers of the truth have surprising poignancy.
By the time the sound and thunder of the big finish have kicked in, I was
surprised to find just how invested in the story I'd become. Sure,
a lot of the rules involving the dagger and the Sands of Time are silly
(why keep it around at all if there's a way to destroy it and it doesn't
seem good for much besides destroying the world? And the script changes
the rules of the whole hourglass thing when it suits its purposes), but
the emotional core of the story is strong, and credit for that goes largely
to the actors.
Gyllenhaal got into great
shape for the role, and handles the physicality of it extremely well, jumping
and diving just like a video game character by way of the old-school movie
swashbucklers. While early on he tries to smile his way through the
movie's rough patches like a commercial pitchman who'd never make a sour
face for fear of offending a focus group, once the story picks up, he strikes
a solid balance between blockbuster fun and the seriousness of someone
who's trying to save his family, his kingdom and his plane of existence.
Both Coyle and Kebbell give their roles more emotional heft than you'd
expect, and you can really feel the brotherhood between the three “sons”
of Sharaman. Kinglsey is a stone cold hoot once he gets rolling,
and is just good enough before then to make the less savvy members of the
audience question whether that nice Oscar winner off to the side could
possibly have anything to do with a diabolical plot. Arterton is
miscast when it comes to the wacky, bickering side of Princess Tamina (although
I'm hard pressed to think of anyone who would have played those scenes
well), but once it's time to be noble and self-sacrificing, those are the
things she does best.
Mike Newell makes his second
trip to fantasy blockbuster territory after previously helming the best
of the Harry Potter movies (The Goblet of Fire), and stages the
action sequences with the skill you'd expect. Showdowns between the
heroes and those nasty Hassansins (loved that name, I mentally cried out
“Hassansins!” every time they appeared onscreen) have a lot of pop, and
the climactic crumbling of underground chambers that hold the hourglass
is pretty nifty. You get the usual high production values you associate
with uber-producer Jerry Bruckheimer, along with some of his telltale script
issues.
Prince of Persia:
The Sands of Time combines a lot of things I like (light-hearted adventure,
time travel, subversive political subtext), and if you're not on board
with those elements you'll more likely fixate on the movie's flaws, particularly
in the early going, when even I couldn't defend it. But once it gets
rolling, it's a solid Summer entertainment machine, one even polite enough
not to waste our time starting plot threads for future sequels. If
you should choose to learn from the mistakes of my history and show up
a half hour late for your screening, we'll keep that between us.
The guy with the muscles is Prince Dastan. |
