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Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
The
latest videogame adaptation to hit the silver screen, may just take its
spot at the top of the list for best film based on a videogame, but
still, it’s not the best film.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time centres around our hero - Dastan
(Jake Gyllenhaal), a young street orphan, who is adopted by the King of
Persia - Sharaman (Ronald Pickup). He grows into his new life, alongside
his foster-brothers, Tus (Richard Coyle) and Garsiv (Toby Kebbell), and
his Uncle, Nizam (Ben Kingsley). The family nows plans an attack on the
sacred city of Alamut, as a spy has information that the people of
Alamut are forging and supplying weapons to the enemies of Persia. In
the campaign, along with his brothers and Uncle, Dastan captures the
city and comes into possession of a strange dagger. The Princess of
Alamut, Tamina (Gemma Arterton) is captured and agrees to marry Tus, to
save her city. Once returned to Persia, the King is murdered after he is
given the gift of a robe, which is poisoned and the blame is left to
Dastan, as he was asked to present this gift to his father. Now on the
run from the armies of Persia, Dastan along with Princess Tamina try to
clear their names and along the way, Dastan learns of a great conspiracy
and what it has to do with the mystical dagger in his possession.
Now
let’s set things straight, right off the bat. Prince of Persia: The
Sands of Time is a very silly film, but it is enjoyable. Jake
Gyllenhaal gives us a particularly heroic and likeable performance as
the greasy haired Dastan, even if he is a Persian prince with a slight
English accent. Gyllenhaal has also obviously been put through the hard
yards to bring Dastan to the big screen. It’s pretty easy to see been
through months of training, you just have to look at him to see that
he’s put on a lot of bulk and muscle for the role, which always helps
when you’re going into a big-budget action film. Gemma Arterton makes a
good equal for Gyllenhaal, with the two sharing some decent chemistry
during their scenes together and Ben Kingsley adds another villainous
role to his long film career, with his jealous, quiet and reserved evil
character - Nizam.
One
thing that Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time has in its favour
are its impressive production values. Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer have
done it again, giving the film an incredible look and style all its own,
from bustling marketplaces and city streets to rolling sand dunes and
beautiful palaces, it’s only just outshone by another of Bruckheimer’s
successful film series - Pirates of the Caribbean with their colourful
characters, epic seas and ships climbing into the top spot. The film
benefits in the visual stakes from filming a good portion of the film on
location in Morocco. Sound stage designs can be great and if done well,
can bring the very fantastical of elements together and create something
great, but nothing beats a film shot at a real location with a real sky
and elements of a real world caught on film. It can’t be beaten and
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is a lucky film in this aspects
and it goes a long way to giving the film that greater sense of realism
and credibility.
The
extra mile has also been taken to incorporate elements of the original
game/s, with the most impressive of all these being Dastan using the
incredible free running art known as ’Parkour’, which is always amazing
to behold and it’s interesting to note that the original founder of
Parkour - David Belle was the stunt coordinator on the film and
coordinated all the scenes involving it.
The
only extra to be found on this disc is a 15 minute ‘making of’ entitled:
An Unseen World: Making Prince of Persia. A standard making of, but it
is an interesting watch to get a glimpse at the effort, scale and detail
gone into making the film.
In the
end, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is a silly film. It’s
big. It’s noisy. It is kinda fun, but you’ll probably end up forgetting
it. But I will say this; It is the single best video game to big screen
adaptation…so far. |
