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Summer is the perfect time of year for producer Jerry Bruckheimer—because that’s generally when his brand of movies hit theaters. It’s the time for brainless action and adventure—like Con Air or Armageddon or Pirates of the Caribbean, to name just a few. While his latest adventure—director Mike Newell’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time—probably won’t become a Pirates-sized success, though, it’s still the kind of popcorny fun that audiences expect from Jerry’s summer adventures.
Adopted by the king of Persia when he was just a boy, Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal) has become a skilled warrior and a worthy prince, bravely fighting beside his oldest brother, Tus (Richard Coyle), the future king.
After Tus leads the Persian army to victory in the holy city of Alamut, he asks Dastan to present the king (Ronald Pickup) with a special robe, which ends up burning him to death. Wrongly accused of his father’s murder, Dastan flees with Alamut’s Princess Tamina (Gemma Arterton). He soon learns that he’s in possession of the Dagger of Time, a magical dagger that unleashes the Sands of Time to allow the person holding it to rewind time.
Convinced that someone close to him framed him for murder to get control of the dagger, Dastan joins forces with Tamina to keep the dagger safe—because, in the wrong hands, it could cause the gods to destroy the world.
Indie darling Jake Gyllenhaal is definitely an unlikely action hero—and his Nicolas Cage hairdo doesn’t exactly help matters, either. But one look at that boyish smirk will tell you that Jake’s in on the joke. He knows that Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is just a cheesy video game adaptation—but he’s clearly having fun with it anyway.
And, really, that’s the right attitude to have when it comes to brainless summer action movies like this one. Sure, the story is needlessly complex, with all kinds of painstakingly elaborate legends explained through endless exposition. For every action-packed fight scene, you get another long, rambling expository scene, in which one of the characters explains what just happened…and what’s about to happen…and how the gods will feel about it…and why, exactly, that’s the case.
And, sure, the humor is corny. In fact, the best parts of the movie involve Alfred Molina playing a crafty, tax-evading ostrich race promoter and conspiracy theorist (nope—I didn’t just make that up).
But it’s all ridiculously entertaining—in that summer action movie kind of way. It’s a couple of hours of brave, brawny heroes in costumes battling bad guys in the CGI desert. And that makes it a sandy summer substitute for those who miss Bruckheimer’s Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.
Blu-ray Review:
If you have a few hours to spare, you’ll be able to uncover all kinds of interesting behind-the-scenes footage on the Prince of Persia Blu-ray release. The Blu-ray disc included in the three-disc Blu-ray/DVD/digital combo pack features an interactive The Sands of Time feature, which allows you to pause the movie and watch relevant making-of featurettes whenever the dagger pops up on the screen. With over 40 extras, covering everything from cast to action sequences to set design, it’s definitely an extensive special feature. It’s interesting stuff, too. Unfortunately, though, you have to watch the entire movie with this feature turned on. There’s no other way to access these extras, so you can’t watch them individually—or even separate from the movie. It’s also a bit difficult to control—not to mention confusing to navigate.
If you’d like to take a peek behind the scenes without the massive time commitment, pop in the DVD instead, and check out the making-of feature, An Unseen World. In this 15-minute feature, you’ll travel from the deserts of Morocco to the sound stages of England with the cast and crew to see the blood, sweat, and tears that went into making the sets and the weapons, braving the elements, and filming the high-energy video game action sequences.
