Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Dastan, a prince of the mighty Persian
Empire who was plucked off the streets as a child when the king witnessed him do
an unselfish act for another boy (and who then made fools out of the king’s
troops by leading them on a merry chase through the slums--but I guess the king’s
got a great sense of humor about these things). He becomes a close confidant to
Tus, his eldest adoptive brother, who mulls over invading the holy
city of Alamut, because a spy has informed them that Alamut has been making
weapons for the enemies of the Persian Empire. Dastan, a man of peace when he’s
not beating people senseless in the streets, is against the invasion.
But Tus decides to go ahead and invade Alamut, anyway--and it’s a perfectly
swell movie war, with rousing music and eye-pooping stunts and special effects,
along with a pretty princess who gets captured. But Dastan soon realizes that
the war was a major sham; there were no weapon forges in Alamut, just a really
cool knife that, when a button is pressed on the hilt, sends its user back in
time for a few minutes. When he’s framed for the murder of the king, Dastan tries
to get help from his uncle, played by Ben Kingsley. But what Dastan doesn’t realize is that a seriously slumming Ben Kingsley is always playing the bad guy.
Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, the uber-producer who gave us The Pirates Of The
Caribbean and the forty nine different versions of CSI (I’m still breathlessly
waiting for CSI: Topeka), The Prince Of Persia is based on a twenty year old
video game that’s so obscure it might as well have been buried in the desert for
a thousand years. Dastan’s big gimmick (other than beating up guys in the street
for money) is hopping from building to building, which he does with ease--at
least until the vapid script calls for him to trip and stumble whenever the plot
(if you can call it that) requires it. Jake Gyllenhaal’s performance is so flat
and one note that it’s clear he wasn’t really taking this seriously.
Gemma Arterton looks very beguiling and alluring in her skimpy princess outfits,
yet that’s really all she’s good for here, just window dressing. She and
Gyllenhaal have zero chemistry, and their eventual romance seems very forced.
The effects and production values are top-notch, but only because Disney dumped
a lot of money onto this flick, which suffers from a silly and predictable
storyline that uses every cliché from every sword and sandal films ever
made--while it ridiculously strives for some inane social commentary by
linking the invasion of Alamut to that of Iraq. If you don’t mind watching
cardboard caricatures spewing pot-boiler dialogue in an overblown cartoon, then
this movie’s for you.
--SF
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