Written by: Boaz Yakin, Doug Miro, Carlo Bernard
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton, Ben Kingsley, Toby Kebbell, Alfred Molina
Rating: [2/5]
Fighting for a crown within a family comes as nothing new in the world of fiction as the desire to have the power in leading a kingdom does not evade all. It can lead to the most treacherous backstabbing and boosted tragedy because of the closeness that comes with the circumstance. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time tells a story with this issue at its center with a mix of time magic making its video game origins quite clear.
After being adopted into the royal Persian family, Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal) now stands as one of the three princes leading the forces to fight their enemies. When a spy informs the troupe about the holy city of Alamut supplying weapons to their enemies, Prince Tus (Richard Coyle) decides to break away from expectation and attack the city. Following a successful raid, when encountering Princess Tamina of Alamut (Gemma Arterton), Dastan finds a blade that carries much importance to the Princess for magical reasons.
First and foremost when talking about this film, the elephant in the room will forever be the all-white and nearly all-British cast assembled to fill it. Given both nations’ colonial tendencies in this particular area of the world it looks wrong but then it raises the question of the tanning budget for this film given how much was applied to these actors to make it believable they were Persian. Something we could excuse decades ago, but something released in 2010 does not deserve the same excuses and it comes down to the fact that adapting this game would never occur with people who actually look as if they are from this area. A star was needed like Jake Gyllenhaal to lead this film, as a default for Hollywood economics, but the rest should not apply to the rest of the cast. Again, there was never a hoard of Richard Coyle fans who would not have shown up to watch this film if he was not playing Prince Tus. One would think they would give even one substantive speaking role to someone of Middle Eastern or North African origin but every single one was either British or Jake Gyllenhaal. It moves beyond the offensive and just makes the entire project quite unserious, and that’s before we get into making the quality on screen subpar.
Moving away from the copious amount of tanning solution utilized to make these characters look like they could exist in Persia, this film navigates through a clumsily told story that needs to introduce a whole new world and the concept of this time bending sand held within a dagger. Dastan and Tamina go from enemies to reluctant allies as the former wants to clear his name for a crime he gets framed for while the latter seeks to honor her role as protector of this great power. It leads to what should be some palpable chemistry between the two leads but alas that never quite happens. This leads this duo through various trials and tribulations as they must hide away from the Persian Army looking for them both for different reasons.
Finding its source material from a video game, this film certainly showed it in the way it displayed various set pieces that made it feel like one a character would face in a game. While having no personal experience with these games, this film at least captured this particular aspect not terribly. From the scenes where he runs away from errant arrows from the Persian Army or one of the more climactic scenes where a structure begins to crumble around him. However, when trying to tie into the larger story, they feel like a nice polish over something that needed much more refinement overall to the detriment of this project overall. The narrative structure moves along far too obviously. Seriously, one does not cast Ben Kingsley as a supposed good guy in a blockbuster without it being obvious who the real villain of the feature will be. If that spoils the film for you then shame on you, because of course Kingsley would be the villain.
Serving as a good example of a video game film through its set pieces, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time struggles with more than just its unfortunate casting and hefty amount of tanning solution used. Its story fails to coherently present its overall narrative purpose and just goes about the majority of its themes in such an inadvertently comedic manner that did no service to these miscast actors. An unfortunate project as a whole.
Films with Josh 