Prince Of Persia: The Sands of Time

Directed by: Mike Newell

Writing Credits: Boaz Yakin, Doug Miro, Carlo Bernard

I'm no expert on movies but I do like to be entertained and when a movie that I had high expectations for fails to entertain me I just have to have my say in it. Now I haven't played all the Prince of Persia games, the first one came out when I was two but I did start playing when "Sands of Time" was released in 2003 for the PS2.

Prince of Persia as a movie for someone who has not played the games, it could be quite exciting and an adventure. The story was very well written and flowed really nicely, you were able to be transported into another world and live the life of an outlawed Persian for 2 hours or so, then fall in love with an exotic beauty and save the day. It's all good unless you have played the games.

Jake Gyllenhaal did a wonderful job as always, he has show so many sides of his craft that it was no surprise to see him performing this life changing role as Dastan. It could just be me but the exotic beauty, Tamina played by Gemma Arterton, was annoying, she was very exotic and very beautiful but her flirty character made me want to slap her upside the head in compared to Dastan, what a spoiled brat. Although, throughout the movie her character and cause did grow on you and once the two (Dastan and Tamina) started working together and their story unfolded together it became a whole new cause to watch it and invest in their story even more.

Now as someone who has played the games, there was not much of the game aspect in it(duh it's a movie but...). There was ONE puzzle that he had to figure out in the beginning and as we all know the games were full of the puzzles, it was puzzles left and right. I'm thinking having that one puzzle was just a lame attempt to trick game players to stay in their seats for the rest of the movie. It worked, we stayed in hopes that throughout the movie we would see more of our Dastan we know to come out at some point. The fight scenes in my opinion where not as elaborate as I thought they would be, they seemed to rely on his aerobatic skills to connect Dastan to the Dastan that we knew in the games.

The sets, the locations all looked like in studio locations, it didn't feel real, it all felt fake. some movies can be really convincing in that area but I guess in this movie they wanted it to look set up? The fighting scenes where probably true to Real Life fighting because they weren't choreographed or shot with much dynamic to make them as exciting as it could have been, perhaps it was another way to stay true to the game since most of the fighting was from a higher vantage point, but also in the games they had times when Dastan did a finishing move and there would be close ups and effects going on. But what can you really expect from a PG-13 from Disney.

The movie collectively felt like a Persian version of Indian Jones. Not even the funny, sarcastic parts where funny, they ended up just being stupid. What happen to the cool sword fights and the jumping acrobatic attacks, and the power attacks?!? It was always the best part of the game when you used the power attacks and unleashed hell the enemy in the game. What happen to the sword effects, and the different weapons that he was able to use in the game? Maybe it was just too much to fit into a movie? That's ridiculous?! They spent time on the stupid Ostrich Race and two goofy characters that came along with that story. The Hassasins where half decent, though in the game I remember them being much scarier and harder to defeat. The effects of the dagger were pretty accurate as to how they were in the game. If anything that was the only thing that was remotely similar to what they games where about, that stupid dagger. All in all, they played all the good action parts in the Teaser/Trailers, watching the movie was boring because the Trailer had showed everything already. I hate when they do that. I guess a lot gets lost when making a game with so much to offer into a movie with Disney.

This movie gets 3.5 rabbits from me, only because I played the game and knew what should have been.