For two very good reasons: one, you don't have Johnny Depp to brilliantly steal the first film or to be the shining star in the next two pieces of crap, and two, and this is very important, you based it off of a video game. Video game movies are historically bad, I cannot think of one game that has evolved into a great movie. There have been decent attempts but nothing great. Prince of Persia falls into this category.
Prince of Persia is the story of Dastan, an orphan boy who was picked off the streets of the Persian capitol because the king liked how white he was compared to the rest of the people. Seriously, this movie is so whitewashed they should just call it Prince of Europe. Anyway Dastan grows up as a prince with his two legitimate brothers, who all have a slight British accent (further accentuating the whole whitewashed thing). After the Persian army takes the holy city of Alamud, Dastan finds a mysterious dagger. Soon after he is framed for the death of his father and barely escapes the city walls. Somehow, the princess of Alamud hops on for the ride. Dastan has to set out to clear his name and discover the mystery of the dagger.
The whole gimmick of the Prince of Persia video game is that Dastan has a dagger that can turn back time every time he presses its super secret button. Thus whenever he is about to die he can turn back time and do it all over again, only without dieing. Dastan discovers the power of the dagger by accident in the movie and of course there is going to be a big plot about time travel and what people will do for that power.
First off, what kind of a name is Dastan? The entire film I was convinced his name was Dustin (being white and all) and that everyone was pronouncing it wrong. Only recently did I discover that it really is Dastan, but everyone in the film pronounces it like they want to say Dustin, but instead just spew out some syllables that sound like neither name. Halfway through saying Dustin they change it making it Duh-Stan or Dah-Stun. It is more annoying than a South African vevuzela.
The bright spot for Prince of Persia is Sir Ben Kingsley. I last saw him in Shutter Island and it really always is a delight and he can play a pretty good bad guy. Jake Gyllenhall doesn't do to bad as the hero either. He is appropriately hunky and amusing, trying to counter his female colleague (Gemma Atherton) who is appropriately annoying. The heroine always spends 70% of the film hurting the main character and 30% helping.
Prince of Persia doesn't use the time travel gimmick nearly enough, but it does contain some sweet parkour moves, coupled with some interesting assassins makes it at least slightly watchable. It's everything I expected, nothing more and nothing less.
2 out of 4 stars
-Christopher O'Connell
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