In the realm of movies inspired by video games such as Streetfighter, Mortal Kombat and Super Mario Bros, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is an amazing movie. When comparing it to other adventure themed movies like Pirates of the Caribbean, The Mummy or any of the Indiana Jones films (yes even Crystal Skull), Persia falls way short of the mark. It’s not terrible in an offensive way, but there is absolutely nothing magical about the film at all. It is merely mediocre at best.

The film is about Prince Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal), a street wise orphan who is adopted into the royal family by the King of Persia. Dastan has two noble stepbrothers; Tus (Richard Coyle) who is next in line to become king and Garsiv (Toby Kebbell), the loyal younger and feisty younger brother. On the recommendation of their uncle Nazim (Ben Kingsley), the brothers launch an attack on the city of Alamut. It seems Nazim has convinced them that Alamut is selling weapons to Persia’s enemies. Once conquering the city, there are no weapons to be found. Whether the filmmakers were trying to make political allusions to the war in Iraq and WMD’s I can’t be sure, but needless to say, the parallels are omnipresent. 

It is in Alamut that Dastan finds an ancient dagger that is the property of Princess Tamina (Gemma Arterton). Tamina is deadly serious when it comes to protecting the dagger and proves it many times throughout the course of the film. The dagger is able to turn back the hands of time when filled with the legendary sands of time. To cut to the chase, shortly after he discovers the dagger, Dastan is framed for the murder of his stepfather, the king, and he goes on the run with Tamina to prove his innocence. Of course, the two don’t get along at first, forming a fiery sparring relationship that soon turns to friendship and then love. This might have been fun to watch if it was something we haven’t seen in countless films before or if Gyllenhaal and Arterton had great chemistry together. Unfortunately, the pair don’t make that much of a convincing couple and the film suffers because of it.

The film moves at a fast enough pace thanks to director Mike Newell, placing the characters in action piece after action piece, unfortunately these scenes don’t resonate because the characters are strictly of the cardboard cut-out variety. The dialogue is decent enough and there are some good lines sprinkled throughout, but it doesn’t make much of a difference. The story is fairly convoluted at times and a bit lazy. The knife actually changes hands so many times that it almost feels like a parody after awhile. The action scenes are just okay and in fact, some of the special effects aren’t really all that convincing. In today’s day and age of digital wizardry, that is really not a good thing. The film ultimately can’t escape the trappings of its video game origins and is essentially a pretty cool movie to look at albeit with little substance. True other films of the genre are similar in this aspect, but a film like Pirates of the Caribbean was able to avoid this trap because of the fun performance given by Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow. While the actor’s in Persia clearly tried their best, the performances are lacking that type of spirited energy.  

Gyllenhaal does the best he can with the role and he certainly looks the part, but his character feels out of sync with everyone else. His character comes across as very tongue in cheek, while the other actors come across as more serious. Gemma Arterton tries to infuse Princess Tamina with a healthy dose of post-feminist liberation, but comes off like a pouty teenager instead, although she is quite easy on the eyes. Arterton does give a very good physical performance however. Ben Kingsley kind of dials it in here and obviously signed on for the paycheck. The one bright spot among the performances comes from Alfred Molina as Sheikh Amar. Molina clearly had a blast with this role and it reminded me very much of John Rhys Davies delightful turns in the Indiana Jones flicks. 

To sum it up, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is merely an okay time at the movies. At moments, it feels like it is going to get really good, but it never achieves any sort of greatness.