May 28 2010

Now Playing:Little lost ‘Prince’ doesn’t feel like Persia

PCN Rating:

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is possibly the most faithful game-to-cinema adaptation to date. 

Characters run across a whirling digital landscape and leap and jump over walls and rooftops.  All of the actors pop on and off screen speaking in disjointed fragments and half thoughts, as if re-enacting really expensive cut scenes. The main macguffin, a knife with a push-button that turns back time, functions like a built-in do-over. So, yes, despite the presence of Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton and Ben Kingsley, this Prince feels as if it were all made up of code and bytes, without the personal spark of human input. It may be a humdinger of a video game but it makes for a really lousy movie.

Opening with a couple of street urchins running across the shanty rooftops of a Persian slum, Newell’s would-be throwback to matinee epics struggles with its influences. A narrative scroll in the beginning wants to be tantalizingly mystical, but instead reads like a New Age Hallmark card. The expansive and detailed sets look as grand as anything from DeMille’s day but they are instantly downsized by less-than-sharp CGI that shrinks the scope and majesty.

Shortly after that initial scene with the young thieves, which reveals the fact that Persian king chose street-boy Dastan as his adopted son, the audience is treated to a massive battle that looks as if it’s being played out by action figures. In the midst of this pinball chaos, Gyllenhaal’s grown-up Dastan and his foster brothers raid the nearby city of Alamut upon suspicion of weapons manufacturing (yes, really, weapons of moderate destruction). Upon seizing the throne, Dastan grabs an ancient dagger as reward and his brother grabs the hand of feisty Princess Tamina (Arterton) in marriage.

This central story set-up, with the falsely accused Alamut, the reluctant princess and the wary king who fears for his sons’ unity in his absence all show promise. It’s the execution that is lacking. Once the narrative wheels are set in motion, and Dastan finds himself falsely accused of his father’s death and on the run with Tamina, the movie goes on autopilot. The rest is a series of incidental chase scenes, too-shiny animated set pieces and a hackneyed mystery that has an obvious solution from the very beginning. By the time Dastan gets around to trying out that magical dagger, and learning that it catapults the user a few moments back in time, there’s not much left for the audience to care about. It’s a poorly constructed film that can’t even raise a single wow from the prospect of a time-traveling weapon.  

It’s a shame that the film fails to the extent that it does, because typically I love the genre it’s working in. Picking up pages from The Arabian Nights and the two cinematic incarnations of Thief of Bagdad (this has more in common with Fairbanks than Sabu), Persia approaches its story with a kind of nostalgic goofiness, more akin to what Stephen Summers did with The Mummy back in 1999.

Newell and his writers and technicians are attempting to add a newer sprightlier edge to the rich fantasy landscape of Arabian folklore. Unfortunately, they drop the ball big time and fail to cast anyone who isn’t part of a clearly Caucasian heritage. If you think Gyllenhaal doesn’t work as a Persian with a British accent, just wait until you see the newly tanned Arterton trying to tune into the graceful sensuality of an Eastern princess.

To be fair, it’s hard to blame the actors for signing up for a project like this, as it could have been terrific fun. Why they agreed to this script is a better question. My guess is they were hoping against hope that magic would happen in the fx studio. After all, large parts of the manuscript must have read like ‘Jake runs in front of green screen’.

 What goes wrong is that no one is having fun, and a score of writers have hammered this thing together like an ill fitting piece of IKEA furniture.  There are dashes of meager invention, and segments clearly prepared to wow, but the whole enterprise lands with a heavy digital thud. In my opinion, this is all down to Persia’s over-reliance on synthetic thrills and character shorthand instead of legitimate depth.

 

But Gyllenhaal and Arterton give it their all, and even though Jake has long been the presumed weak spot of the movie, he’s not as jarring as originally suspected. Part of this is because the entire film lacks a sense of reality or texture, and the other elements, particularly the special effects, don’t make his modernity seem out of place. The other reason is that Gyllenhaal isn’t without talent and charm as a performer, and even though he’s way out of his depth here, he works hard at making Dastan a real character and strives to build a playful interaction with Arterton. For her part, Gemma is radiantly beautiful without being startling, and she has such a pluck about her as an actress that her looks aren’t a detractor. Unfortunately the dialogue and scripting scuttle almost all of their efforts to bring any sense of substance to the runaway style on display.  

The supporting cast is mostly out to lunch. Kingsley, as the oh-so obvious villain, looks like he’s channeling Torin Hatcher’s nefarious wizard from the 1956 Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, with far less dark relish. The brothers and late great king are mostly background dressing, and their scenes are less than perfunctory.

The only truly bright spot in the film is the surprise entrance of Alfred Molina who I wasn’t expecting to see. He’s playing the typical Disney side-character who wants to believe he’s a villain but couldn’t be farther from one; think Long John Silver-lite. He’s even got the best story in the script. Nicknamed ‘The Sheik’, Molina is the head of a faux enclave of brigands, who aren’t bloodthirsty as claimed, but enterprising ostrich racers who want nothing more than find entrepreneurial success and evade excessive taxing.

Unfortunately, there’s only so much even Molina can do with a half-sketched character and although he’s in and out of the film, the promise of seeing an exciting chase scene involving the ostriches is not fulfilled. In fact, empty promises are what Prince of Persia specializes in. There’s more than enough for a ripping adventure, but Newell, who’s done great work elsewhere, can’t seem to get the engine cranked and started.

Showing wit and charm when he took the reins of the Potter franchise, Newell has simply picked the wrong vehicle to transition to a full fledged popcorn picture. There’s nothing in this one that plays to his strengths, and a director who has always been known for dishing up savory interactions between his characters crumbles under the weight of fatuous spectacle and routine action.

By Nathan • Film • 3 • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,