Prince of Persia: Movie Review With Adult Beverage
Monday, May 31, 2010 at 12:01PM | by Otter 
Persian to Persian.My nephews are in town, and as it was rainy and drab we decided to go watch people killing each other.
So in we went to see The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.
First the Haiku movie review:
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Dasan, just beefcake,
Mugs, smirks, unwinds time, but I
Should like two hours back.
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Ordinarily I wouldn’t be caught within five klicks of an adapted-from-video-game movie. But director Mike Newell is a canny old hired gun who can make watchable film out of spare parts, so I thought I’d risk it.
And hey, it has Ben Kingsley. (His turn in Twelfth Night as Feste and doing one of the bit parts in Gandhi have made me believe against the evidence that no movie he is in can really fail.
Kingsley of Persia. Actually acts.
Well, but then there’s Prince of Persia, which is one of those movies you watch and, in the silence that follows you say, “Thank you. Thank you very much” as a way of excusing yourself rapidly.
There are some things it does very well: it’s better than any movie I’ve ever seen at conveying the feel of playing a video-game in which characters run up walls, for instance. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Matrix films were better at gravity-defying movement, but those were fantasy stylings, motion-as-poetry. For the prosaic, this-is-ordinary choppy quick-marching rhythms of a PlayStation, this is what you want. It’s digital, and looks it.
Fight scenes are quick-cut and plentiful, so young-ish teenaged boys without noticeably high standards will say “Whoa” once or twice. For those of us who still believe in spacial relationships, they might be a little too rapid.
And there are some serious bad-ass assassins (they are called Hassansins, to show that somebody had access to Wikipedia) who gave me a genuine frisson. All sorts of interesting potential for developing insights into the difference between superficial video-game evil and the real thing gets thrown away in the interest of moving on to the swashbuckling.
And that really is the sum of this film: every possibility for interest gets bungled, really. Some chilling acting between an assassin leader played by (this is a real human’s name) Gísli Örn Garðarsson and Ben Kingsley ends up getting cut short, and the excellent Garðarsson is upstaged by a CGI snake who lives in his sleeve.
[DIGRESSION: I presume he’s Nordic in some sense, Scandanavian, playing a… what? Persian? Egyptian? Who knows. Something East of Gibraltar. This is payback for Antonio Banderas playing an Arab playing a Norseman.)
What a waste. The two baddies were threatening to run away with the movie in a manner rarely seen in films not featuring Alan Rickman.
The story is badly told at almost every level.
About that story: we have several characters whose problems begin with their names, which I swear must have been created with a Scrabble bag and some producer reaching in blindfolded. Well, when I tell you that King Sharaman (the White?) plucks orphan Dasan (Dasani, as a child?) out of the streets to join the royal family, including uncle Nazam and brothers Garsiv and Tus, you get the idea that this is not the sort of movie where you’re going to cozy to the characters: you can’t remember who goes with which set of letters. (Notice how few of those names, on a Scrabble rack, would be capable of producing good words? I expect that’s how these things begin.)
A timeworn (or time-proven) plot quickly develops about loyalties and family rivalries, the family is set at odds, and off goes Dasan on his own, with Princess Tamina in tow. (“Tamina” sounds like a humus-based dish to me. Joke of your choice goes here.) An allegedly subtle subplot about unjust invasions gives a school-marm look at George W. Bush, an allegedly humorous character turns up to complain about taxes and offer ostrich races. (Maybe this is in the video game. I’ll have to consult my sources.)
Oh, and a highly coveted dagger, given by the gods, rapidly changes possession. It has a button on it that can turn back time.
Unless you’re deeper than I am, you never really give a damn about it, though. It’s a machina ex dīs (my Latin is rusty: does ex take the ablative?), a machine from the gods. That’s generally a bad place to throw a story’s weight, even when the story is just an excuse for the movie.
The fight scenes are a little too quick and difficult to sort out. Which surprised me. Newell’s not the guy to forget that relationships between objects is how you establish, well, relationships between objects. In a lot of fight scenes you come away more with a sense that Lots of Things Happened Very Quickly than any particular sense of place, space, or action.
Worse, things happen but we do not know why. They are explained in the next scene through a flashback. Ah, thank you very much, got it.
I can only hope that Newell fought against this at every stage. He ought to know better. He does know better. Gross confusion between suspense and simple ignorance. Oh, okay: that dagger can release the wrath of the gods. Didn’t know that. Good times.
The leads are not especially interesting to watch. Jake Gyllenhaal and Gemma Arterton are the leads, both generic eye-candy with nothing special.
Gyllenhaal has a nice sideways grin that might pass for the ghost of the great swashbucklers, but it’s a little sketched on. I think the story might have been better served by aiming at somebody less known as an actor but trashily buff: long after Prince of Persia gathers dust on the DVD shelf, Arnold Schwarznegger’s Conan the Barbarian will be worth watching for its unabashed camp.
The love story has a few nice moments, but nothing Han Solo and Princess Leia didn’t do a lot better thirty-five years ago.
It’s best enjoyed cheaply on Netflix.
Or given a miss so you can spend time outside with a home-made mojito, which is, really, a mint-julep with rum instead of bourbon and a suspicion of lime.
So first plant a little mint in a pot in your backyard. It’s an aggressive plant, so don’t plant it in the garden, or let it near your daughters.
Not a particularly Persian drink. But good for a sunny afternoon.
12 mint leaves
1 tbsp sugar or simple syrup
0.5 oz lime juice, or, better, a real live lime wedge or two.
2 oz soda
Place mint leaves in bottom of glass. Add crushed ice, sugar, and lime (or juice), and muddle with a bent spoon or some other improvised muddling device. Add rum and gently remuddle. Add soda water and garnish with mint leaves.
Consume four and smile intelligently at a spouse or significant other.
Reader Comments (3)
Here's my mojito recipe.
1 can frozen limeade
1 can white rum
3 cans sparkling water
mint leaves to taste (you gotta break 'em to release the flavor)
A mojito (or four) makes almost any movie enjoyable.
Shirley, pack your silver spoons, knee socks, and Tom Collins glasses and come on over here for The Great New Orleans Mojito Contest and Bowling Match.
Be right there. I'll be the one in the big sunglasses.