REVIEW - Prince of Persia The Sands of Time

When adopted Prince Dastan leads his father’s army in a successful attack on an enemy stronghold, he earns the acclaim of the people. But when his father his assassinated and Dastan framed for the murder, he goes on the run with the cities Princess and a seemingly innocuous dagger in tow. Little does he know that together they have the power to erase the terrible recent events, or destroy the world.

Based in part on the 2003 video game and featuring one of the genres most revered characters, Prince of Persia is as close as you can get to video game royalty. After our chat last month with creator and co-writer Jordan Mechner we were confident that The Sands of Time would be a step above the average, video game adaptation.

And it certainly is – arguably marking the first time that a proper narrative film has been successfully inspired by game material, bolstered by some stunning visuals, a massive production budget and a top drawer cast.

It’s a progression for the sub-genre then, no doubt helped by steering clear of the plot of the games, instead focussing on creating a vivid adventure, complete with its own mythologies and supernatural items. Chief among them is the Dagger of Time – in the games it allowed the Prince to steal back a precious few temporal seconds in the event of imminent death. In the film it becomes a doomsday device, protected for centuries by a clan of guardians, with Gemma Arterton’s Tamina the latest in the line. The Dagger is the crux of the film; in the wrong hands it could unleash the sands from the Hourglass of the Gods and destroy the world or rewrite history.

The problem here is that the mythology is opaque and unfamiliar, leaving the audience adrift. The powers of the Dagger themselves are limited, ill-defined and a little pointless. The time-reversing sequences in the film are attractive to look at but nothing more – we aren’t given time to linger on the awesomeness of being able to manipulate time. And the power is rarely used to compliment the action – more often by accident or to prove a point. Apart from one decent moment with a snake attack, it misses the appeal completely of knowing that you have a lifeline, of being able to make an incredible leap of faith without the possibility of death.

Naturally enough, the film looks dazzling, with massive sets and decent CG that is a little cartoonish but makes up for it with the scale of the Persian cities it recreates. But too little use is made of these massive sets and locations and the Parkour-inspired running and vaulting of the games is almost entirely absent, despite its obvious appeal to an action/adventure film. The Prince is too often saddled with a whinging side-kick and further hampered by Gyllenhaal’s minimal physical prowess. He may be newly buff and acquits himself reasonably well in the swordplay but he’s too bulky for the copious acrobatics, forcing the film to resort to judicious editing to make his actions seem fluid. Apart from an opening fortress assault, there are few memorable set pieces and a focus in the final act on remarkably dull one-on-one fights. It’s not helped by the sudden introduction of a band of comically villainous Hassansin warriors who appear to have magical powers just because they can.

When he’s not flailing around like a reject from Cirque Du Soleil, Jake Gyllenhaal is almost brilliant as Dastan. His faintly Cockney accent rarely slips and despite looking decidedly un-Persian he’s an easy-going lead with some decent comic timing. It’s just a shame he shares most of his quip-heavy scenes with the increasingly dull Arterton, who presents all her dialogue without a hint of inflection, irony or humour. Most of the time she stands there looking like a fake-tanned, anorexic guppy while Gyllenhaal tries his best to wring some bitchy rapport from the proceedings. Toby Kebbell and Richard Coyle (that Welsh one from ‘Coupling’) are decent as Dastan’s brothers and Ben Kingsley seems lost as their uncle. The only consistently entertaining performance comes from Alfred Molina’s Sheik Amar, who rails against taxes and conjures up massive conspiracy theories. It may be anachronistic but at least he has some token personality.

And it’s that personality which is missing most from The Sands of Time, particularly if Bruckheimer expect this series to be the new Pirates of the Caribbean. But there’s none of the latter films’ quirkiness here, no bizarre but accessible characters and none of its self-aware charm. But crucially Gyllenhaal, though a fine actor, is no Johnny Depp and the lack of a compelling central character is the biggest barrier to the film’s success.

As a blockbuster summer adventure movie, The Sands of Time is only intermittently successful. While I was watching, I couldn’t help seeing it as a symptom of the increasingly strained relationship between the audience and the viewer, of films that cost so much money to make that they strive to appeal to every possible demographic and end up satisfying no one.

Take, for example, the need to make things complicated. This is fundamentally a kid’s film and yet the filmmakers feel the need for conspiracies and plot twists. The villain changes no less than three times, despite it being obvious from the start that Kingsley will be the eventual evil-supremo – he spends so much time wearing eyeliner and looking arch that it’s almost a relief when he finally reveals his nefarious plans. But it’s supposed to be a family adventure, with clearly defined good and evil. We don’t even get a band of heroes to cheer for until the closing minutes and their eventual demise is edited down to nothing; a better film would have milked a late-on sacrifice to tear-jerking climax but director Mike Newell is too busy rocketing towards the CG overload of the finale.

It would be easy to give The Sands of Time a pass as a mostly competent action adventure which raises the bar for game adaptations but is that really all we can hope for from our summer blockbusters? That they aren’t as bad as we were expecting? The action is pedestrian and edited into rarely coherent shreds and the central conceit of the film, the accursed dagger, actively negates any peril by leaving us assured that even death can be reversed. The heartstrings barely ripple as we see characters fall by the wayside, safe in the knowledge that they’ll return. Oh and the score blatantly rips off better themes from Pirates... and The Mummy.