The ability to jump off of rooftops, fly through the air and dodge a massive amount of weapons in sight, is pretty awesome, but not when it happens every five minutes. Maybe in a video game, but not in a film. For anyone that has played the “Prince of Persia” games over the last few years, that’s what they’re all about, mixing a cool story with enough action to throw your hat at, but unfortunately that formula proves to be poison on the big screen.
With that said, “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time†is a perfect example of a film that looks overtly fun at first, but then ends up being completely boring.
“Prince of Persia†takes place in the land of Persia, where a prince and a mysterious princess fight dark forces to protect an ancient dagger that is capable of releasing the sands of time and allow its possessor to rule the world. After being set up and accused of killing the king, Prince Dastan, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, teams up with Princess Tamina, played by the lovely Gemma Arterton, to try and prove that that he did not kill the king.
A major problem facing this film was that the action scenes were very repetitive. It seemed that Gyllenhaal did nothing but pull off unrealistic stunts, such as jumping off of roof tops, doing slow-motion flips in the air and dodging flying arrows without getting hit once, while everyone else seems to have trouble avoiding them. Even though he is the main character of the film, he should not get a pass. Eventually, he should experience a wound of some sort.
Maybe his name should have been Prince Prima Donna.
Even though this film had that “Pirates of the Caribbean†feel to it, it did not come close to creating the same buzz. As a result, the hype quickly dies in this film. After watching the trailer, you’d expect a fun-filled adventure, but with such a weak and unoriginal storyline, it is hard to find a way to stay interested throughout the film.
Nonetheless, the acting was not terrible. However, it was not great. The ability to portray English accents through the film for the actors was successful, but the only problem is that when every single character in the film is speaking with the same accent, you know that the plot is impractical. It is almost as if there were Italians in Italy speaking with Irish accents; it just doesn’t fit.
You could tell that this film was an adaptation of a video game by the way the stunts were repeated over and over again, being reminiscent to a Batman or a James Bond film. The problem with that picture is that we have seen it over and over again, and quite frankly, it gets old.
Simply put, f you want to avoid a boring adventure, your best bet is to take a walk through the desert, because it would be more fun than this film.
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