All the ingredients were there for another Jerry Bruckheimer produced mega-smash film (he is responsible for producing, amongst many films, The Pirates of the Caribbean, National Treasure and Bad Boys movies). There was a hunky male lead in Jake Gyllenhaal, who was believable as Dastan albeit with an unbelievable British accent, a beautiful (and completely underused) female co-star in Gemma Arterton as well as a breadth of story telling material from which to create an entertaining adventure given the fact that there are more Prince of Persia video game titles than there are Kardashian sisters. So why wasn’t it the slam bang desert adventure one was hoping for? The action was there as the audience was given plenty of sword play and rooftop shenanigans from Dastan (a staple of the video games I am told) plus the chemistry between Gyllenhaal and Arterton was palpable. Their characters did not automatically fall for one another as one might have been expecting in a film such as this but, through some nice chunks of dialogue, grew upon each other (and grew as characters) so that when the final climax of the film came, the tension facing Dastan and Tamina actually gripped the audience and sucked them in. However that was the issue with Sands of Time, the plot was convoluted to the point of being frustrating and ultimately forgettable. The reason for Dastan and Tamina’s quest to keep the dagger safe and the dagger’s true purpose and power were explained, but even those explanations were lost amongst the poorly constructed sub-plots of the struggle amongst Dastan and his brothers for their dead father’s crown, the true intentions of his dubious Uncle Nizam (Ben Kingsley) and a boat load of ineffective CGI.
In the end, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was nothing more than a nice two hour distraction, which one immediately forgot about when they hit the stop button on their DVD player.
Grade: C-
