Release Date – 5/28/10
Dastan was an orphan who was adopted by the King of Persia. He grew up in the royal family and fought in their battles. Along with his uncle Nizam and two brothers, Garsiv and Tus, he attacks a city that is under suspicion of supplying weapons to their enemies. They capture the princess of this city, Tamina. During the attack, Dastan recovers an odd dagger which has the power to turn back time. Someone seems to be after that dagger and sets a plot in motion to frame Dastan and have him killed in order to obtain this ancient relic. Dastan knows someone in his family has betrayed him and now has to prove his innocence. This movie is the definition of a summer popcorn flick. Sit back and turn off your brain because the plot isn’t the greatest, the acting is so-so, but there are some cool action scenes to check out.
Jake Gyllenhaal is Persian Prince Dastan. Yes, he’s supposed to be Persian. Because he’s so recognizable as an American actor, it was hard to believe. Real foreign actors mixed in with your average Caucasians just made it even sillier to think about. Jake did alright, his best scenes were most likely done by his stunt double. Since this is a video game adaptation, the character needed to flip around acrobatically like he would in the game. It was pretty cool to watch but had nothing to do with Jake. Gemma Arterton played Princess Tamina. Holy smokes, sign this chick up for some more movies. She was smoking hot and since she isn’t the most well known actress, she actually pulled off the part of this Arabian beauty. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Ben Kingsley once again plays a creep as Uncle Nizam. I’m not going to spoil anything here because all the trailers already give it away, he’s up to no good. Because they hid this fact through half of the movie, he wasn’t able to shine properly as a bad guy. The worst part was probably Alfred Molina as a swindling sheik, Amar. I usually like him but he just annoyed me and was the forced comedic relief through most of the movie. And what the hell was with the ostrich races? That reminded me of the stupid monkey vine scene from the latest Indiana Jones.
It was directed by Mike Newell (Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire) and I guess he did what he could with a video game adaptation. I’ve seen worse. Sometimes its hard to take a simple story from a game and make a compelling movie that lasts 2 hours. The action was cool and the desert scenery was nice to look at, some of the effects even reminded me of Harry Potter, but other than that it’s a pretty flat movie. It might keep you entertained on a boring afternoon when nothing else is in theaters. But in the summer there’s plenty more coming out where this one can wait until DVD or even HBO. The ending had a nice twist, I did enjoy that. But it wasn’t enough to save this movie from the Tony Montana treatment. SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND!!! WHACKED!!!
IMDB – 6.9/10
Rotten Tomatoes – 43%
Movie Wiseguys – 5.5/10
