Prince of Persia

Jerry Bruckheimer’s tree and lightening logo flashes up in glorious technicolur and I expect to hear the raucous ‘YEAHHHH’ of Roger Daltry from The Who and Horatio to appear with a case that only he and his crack team of CSI can solve. I got a jolt back to the current proceedings with the opening of Bruckheimers latest blockbuster effort.

An ancient looking map flashes onto the screen explaining the location for this epic. It takes place in Persia surrounded by Turkey and Egypt and India, no sign of Iraq or Kuwait though….Funny that, oh and by the way did you know that Persia is modern day Iran? It’s ok, Jerry Bruckheimer knows that modern cinema goers are an educated bunch and will not need geography explained to them. Also modern political matters are not for consideration when Disney have a movie to sell or am I being to cynical?

Out arrives Dastan, the Lion of Persia who is played by American actor Jake Gyllenhaal doing an English accent. The confusion with regard to casting doesn’t end here. All the main cast are English or American and not very culturally appropriate seeing as they are playing Persian characters. Jake Gyllenhaal has a hairdo that any boyband member would be proud of, Gemma Arterton sounds like she just arrived in from Mallory Towers and Ben Kingsley walks around doing sinister like Ming the Merciless. The whole movie is camp as hell but with no fun or wit. This is a shame seeing as they use ‘from the producers of Pirates of the Carribean’ in their advertising, it’s nowhere near as fun as that franchise.

The plot is thin in this fantasy/gamers film. It’s unoriginal and laboured, the whole thing plodded and I didn’t care enough about the plight or the characters to want to follow the story. The fight scenes and action are impressive. I’m assured that those familiar with the game will be happy that it retains the essence of its source material.

Gemma Arterton is very pretty and oh so feisty in that girl in an adventure film way. How she remained pristine white in the dessert is an amazing feat in itself. Let’s be frank she’s not here to serve any purpose plot-wise except as a romantic foil for Prince Dastan, also she was very good at shouting ‘DasTAAAN’ a lot and needing to be rescued. A politically correct Marian fighting alongside her man, as does Cate Blanchett in Robin Hood, she is not. The rare elements of humour were tongue in cheek and provided mainly by Alferd Molina’s Sheikh Amar who is a cheeky cockney, wahey!

Looking at Jake Gyllenhaal in this roles feels uncomfortable. More used to seeing him in more indie roles, he looks great but the break-out of typcasting it appears he was trying to make didn’t work. I really wanted somebody like Naveen Andrews from ‘Lost’ in the role but then I don’t make Hollywood blockbusters.

This movie clocks in at two hours and does not have enough saving graces to justify this length. Sure, it looks good and the humour when it comes is titter inducing. The action scenes are impressive but all this together is not enough to cancel out its many glaring shortcomings with regard to bad casting and a thin plotline.

Meabh Barron