Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (2010)

Date Reviewed: Jan 30, 2011

Critical Kobold Rating:    (3 out of 5 Tasty Fish)

 

He's a Real Prince of a Guy!

     Prince of Persia: Sands of Time is a Disney movie based on a computer game. Always an iffy proposition at best, especially when the computer game is best known for one interesting gimmick. At any rate, while not a riveting spectacle of cinema, the Prince comes out alright.

     This is a surprisingly long film, coming in at just a goblin fart below two hours. The basic storyline is that young Dastan is an orphaned street beggar, adopted by the noble Sharaman, King of Persia, as his third and youngest son. He grows up, apparently under the tutelage of a master gymnast, to be Jake Gyllenhaal, a reckless yet good-hearted Prince of Persia. 

     He and his Persian siblings have been sent to the holy city of Alamut, where evidence indicates that the city’s Princess Tamina, played by Gemma Arterton, is selling weapons to rebels who cause trouble for the Persian troops occupying the land. Dastan’s two older brothers decide to attack the city, capturing the princess and putting on a display of Persia’s power.

     Alamut falls to the Persians, thanks to crafty Dastan’s efforts at sneaking through the side door, but all is not well. During the celebratory after-battle fiesta, King Sharaman is murdered by a poisoned cloak, which apparently leaked acid onto the king as he wore it. (I know, you’re thinking, “Seriously? They steam-broiled him with a cloak? WtF?” But there’s sort of an explanation later.)

     Because Dastan had been the one to give the cloak to the king as a gift of their victory, he’s immediately accused of the murder. Now, this makes very little sense, since he was just given the cloak minutes before, to present to his dad as a victory trophy; he didn't dig it up himself. Also, since he's the youngest of the three brothers, it's not like he'd inherit the kingdom or anything, so why bother to off Pops? And why in the world would his two brothers, whom he's apparently been close to his entire adult life, suddenly believe that Dastan would assassinate Dad right in the middle of a big-ass party, with, like, three hundred witnesses? But we have to get this film's plot off to a start somehow, so everyone apparently has a Stupid Moment, and decides to smite Dastan. He has to make a hasty and acrobatic escape from the throne room, taking along the captured Princess Tamina, who shows him the back way out.

     After they flee, the princess displays a suspicious interest in a ceremonial dagger that Dastan recovered during the attack on Alamut. The glass handle holds some sand, almost like an hourglass. During a scuffle for control of the dagger, Dastan discovers that pressing a gem on the hilt activates the magic sparkly sand within, reversing the flow of time for one minute. The wielder of the dagger can thus know the immediate future, and has a short ‘replay’ button at his disposal if things don’t go his way the first time around. Sweet! The princess is also a priestess of sorts, whose order has been charged throughout the ages with caring for the dagger and hiding the Sands of Time, which refill the thing.

     Well, the persecuted prince and the perturbed princess roam about the parched Persian prairie, pursued by patrols and the other pair of princes. They eventually team up with an outlaw sheik, who hosts illegal ostrich races for a living, and his band of boisterous Bedouins. The sheik’s interest in all of this is simply to get some reward money, tax-free, for turning over Dastan to the cops. However, he has no choice but to tag along with our heroes, because assassins are now tracking the prince, and therefore the sheik’s band of merry rogues as well.

     Dastan and Tamina soon learn to trust each other and unravel the mystery of the murder. It seems that the late king’s younger brother, traitorous Uncle Nizam, wants to rule the kingdom. Nizam has learned that underneath the city of Alamut is a cavern wherein a humongous stash of the magic time-sand is hidden. Nizam believes that if he gets a hold of the dagger, he can use the elephant-load of sand down in the tunnels to wind back time to when he was a young boy and saved the life of Sharaman. If history is re-written so that Nizam never saves the king’s bacon, then he’ll retroactively have no older brother who lives to be king, no nephew-princes to be the rightful heirs, and no evidence of foul play, because Nizam's plan never would even have happened, thanks to the whole time distortion effect of the sand.

     To help in his nefarious plot, Nizam has enlisted the ancient order of hassansins, the Persian version of master ninjas. The hassansins use martial arts, high tech weapons like wrist dart launchers, poisonous pet vipers, black voodoo mojo, and a good bit of CGI to eliminate their targets. Apparently, the poison cloak of acid that killed Sharaman was their doing, although this is never stated directly in the movie.

     So Nizam’s after the Sands of Time, the brothers are after Dastan, the sheik is after gold, Dastan is after Nizam, the assassins are after Dastan, and Tamina is after the dagger. You got all that?

Little Known Historical Fact:

In ancient Persia, most personal duels

were settled via "dance-offs."

     The story plays out as I’m sure you know it will. There’s a good deal of fighting, running, more acrobatics, some Princess cleavage, some princely abs, magic sand, and ostriches before the final showdown, when all of the elements above come together and find each other.

     All in all, an OK film. I can’t say honestly that it offered anything spectacular in the way of entertainment, but it was an acceptable diversion on a Sunday afternoon. It doesn’t beat out The Scorpion King as my favorite “Ass-Kicking Lost Heir Hero in an Ancient Fantasy Desert Kingdom” movie, but it holds its own as an action-y romp.

I'm no historian, but I'm pretty sure

Persian princesses got stoned to death for

showing belly buttons.

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