Prince of persia

O great a movie, by disney, with the star from Brokeback Mountain doing action, playing a different race...... and yea it's from a videogame. Sounds like ultimate doom right? Don't worry Prince of Persia was actually pretty good.

As a quick spoiler free summary Gyllenhaal plays the prince Dastan who finds the Dagger of Time, a blade that can reverse short moments of time. This is a valuable item wanted by the bad guy, so Gyllenhaal must go on an adventure with the princess, played by a hot Gemma Arterton, to not let the dagger fall into the wrong hands. Generic right? well it's done well and the ending took me by surprise completely.

If you can get over the fact that Jake Gyllenhaal is white and not anywhere close to being Persian, (he doesn't have to be the right race, he's just so handsomely tough!) he does do a good job as the leading man. Admittedly he is pretty built and fits in well with the action.

The bad guy, Ben Kingsley, is quite obvious which is disappointing, because the movie tries to play it like it's a reasonable surprise. Yea big surprise the evil looking guy wearing eyeliner who's first line is encouraging the attack on a holy city is evil, big surprise.

The Gemma Arterton as the princess fits in well, however it is disappointing that the most beautiful princess in all of persia is an english actress. She does plays her character believably, she has one of the best performances of the film, the only problem is that I think they cast her on her looks (which I do not disagree with) and her serious whisper so when she has to yell or scream it often comes out as a high pitch whine.

The action here is good but its hurt with the new theme in directing which is the shaking camera and quick shots of something. Sometimes I would like them to just zoom out a little and see Gyllenhaal take the guy down, not a shaking close up where you can only kind of get the idea of what he just did. The action will keep you excited but when it comes down to it you sometimes wish they would just a show a shot of what is happening to show the scale of what he's doing, like running across rooftops acrobatically, I'd rather just see him do it, then these flashy quick movements.

Quick mentions go to the soundtrack and the comedy relief character, which is a comedy relief character, not much else to say about him, he can be funny but annoying like all comedy relief characters. The soundtrack of this movie is great, it fits in with the atmosphere and well represents the moment at hand.

The romance between Gyllenhaal and the princess is surprisingly well done. I hate romances in films, especially action films, because you know what's going to happen you, you know they are going to get together. But even I enjoyed this one, they didn't do anything original, but they kept it light and moving, it didn't drag down the whole plot like most do and it didn't fall into the old, "well the good guy won so there for the girl that he had no chemistry with now loves him" thing.

The magic is handled a little inconsistent, the idea of the dagger of time and it's abilities is well presented and believable. However when other things occur it's confusing if this is because of the same kindof magic elements. For example there is a character that can control snakes, now are these just his well trained pets, or is that some kind of spell or magic or something, it's not explained.

On a bit of a side note I think it is interesting how people are able to simply believe whatever is shown to them on the screen. In the movie 300 hundred the persians were these overly mystical ruthless savages, here they are presented with reasonable honor, what is with the change? Maybe we are supposed to believe that because two of princes are white guys that they are all suddenly righteous. All I'm saying is that people don't ever question what is told to them on the screen often movies point to someone and say "he's the bad guy because he's evil!" and most Americans reply with "ok, he's a foreigner so I can buy that."

Anyways sorry about that, my conclusions on the movie is simple. This film is kickass! And you should have an enjoyable experience watching it, it does have it's moments of stupidity but not enough to take you out of the movie. For a video game movie, this is truly a cut above, it is not special, not a great movie to go down in history, but it's more like a solid james bond film, this movie is just a kick ass action film that will keep you entertained the whole time.

Prince of Persia accomplished what it wanted to do, be a fun action film, I'll give it a 8/10