Prince of Persia: Sands of Time Movie Review

Making video games into movies is not a completely new idea. We have seen it a few times in the past with mixed success. Most of those films tended to take a concept and create an entire new story out of it, while Prince of Persia basically copies most of the storyline of the first video game, Sands of Time with some elements from other games mixed in. It's closest brother would be Pirates of the Caribbean only in Persia.

Story

For those unfamiliar with the video game plot, the story takes place in the Persia empire in the 6th century. Dastan is a street urchin (sounds like Aladdin). After impressing the king, Dastan gets adopted as his third son. Dastan helps lead an attack on the sacred city of Alamut because they suspect that they are selling weapons to Persian enemies. Dastan ends up with a magical dagger that has the ability to turn back time for a short period. They rejoice after their victory and Dastan is tricked into giving the king a sabotaged cloak that burns him to death. As a result, Dastan has to escape his new comfy home with the beautiful princess and prove his innocence by finding the true murderer.

The easiest thing to complain about with this plot is that it's confusing. Some action adventures end up having so much going on that the audience, particularly if they have never heard of the game, get completely lost. Add a little time controlling that allows for changing the future and things only get more confusing.

Feel of the Film

This movie was made to be an action adventure with some romance and an overall silly feel. Dumb movies can be great fun. They are relaxed and often good date movies, but this film for the most part is some dumb that it can get silly. All of the actors are light skinned in a supposed Persian world, which gives the whole film a staged feel on top of the magic, over the top villains, and pseudo kung fu action. There are plenty of cool bits, don't get me wrong. The dagger of time makes for some fun little jokes as Dastan is almost killed and has to go back to avoid it a second time. The film also has a lot of romantic jokes as the princess and Dastan flirt. They can get tiresome to any serious movie-goer but if you're just out for a bit of fun then there is no real harm.

Parkour?

One of the big draws of the film for action lovers was the promise of amazing stunts similar to those in the video game (for example, jumping across building tops and swinging from high spires). The actual parkour (a term referring to doing amazing stunts using nearby solid objects) in the film is disappointing. The camera work reminds on of some of the Bourne movies where there is so much shaking and changing angles that you have no real idea what is going anymore. A long distance approach to the stunts would have made them much more impressive.

The film is definitely not the best thing to come out recently, but it has a certain amount of appeal as a film that almost anyone could go to and find something good about it. Gamers will like the fact that it's based on a game, women will like the romance and scantily clad ripped men, kids will like the action, and grandma will like asking you questions the whole time because the plot is so confusing. It has received mixed reviews, but the average is around a 4/10.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Persia:_The_Sands_of_Time_%28film%29