Premise: A prince must save his kingdom, his family, and restore his honor.
Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal * Gemma Arterton * Ben Kingsley * Alfred Molina * Steve Toussaint
Story: An orphan is taken off the streets to live with the King after he impresses the ruler with his skill and willingness to help another poor orphan. Years later, that same adopted prince (Gyllenhaal) accompanies his brothers on a mission against their enemy, but they are diverted to attack a neighboring city previously thought to be neutral. The prince is blamed for an assassination of the King and escapes with the ruler of the attacked city (Arterton). The prince discovers he has been deceived and sets out to right the wrongs done to him, his family, and both kingdoms.
Review: It's a forgettable action film in the vein of the Mummy movies by Stephen Sommers. A nice escapist film that won't engage too many brain cells.
Plot: The plot is simple and predictable. The adopted prince (who wowed the King with his parkour abilities) acts against his conscience and supports his brothers in an ill-advised attack on a neutral city. During the celebration, the king is murdered, the brothers assume it's Dastan (Gyllenhaal, although I kept thinking Dustan, as in "Dustan in the Wind") and order his arrest and execution. Dastan escapes, taking Princess Tamina (Arterton) with him for the predictable love-hate witticisms that accompany any such pairing, as well as escape attempts. Along the way they come across a Sheikh (Molina) and his bodyguard (Toussaint) who imprison them, they escape again, discover the true source of the conspiracy (Kingsley wants the magical dagger the Princess guarded), they escape again, team up with the Sheikh, try to find a way to stop the conspiracy, escape again, confront the presumptive king with the truth, are foiled, then fight the big fight against the end boss to save the world.
Sounds like a videogame, doesn't it?
Effects: There is some excellent stuntwork in the movie: the parkour sequences (there are at least five if not more - I stopped counting) are excellent and thrilling to watch. While the snake-fighting scenes are obviously CGI (who's willing to fight horned pit vipers for real?) they're quick, understandable and reasonably painless to watch. But the wonky CGI definitely pulls the viewer out of the film. Rubber faces, non-practical effects and the over-the-top battle scene near the end seem to be pulled straight out of a Sommers film. There are also a couple of bad edits - not the "which flap of the collar of the coat is on top?" version but the "hey, she was on his left a second ago" kind. Not a killer, but distracting.
(I just had a notion. Jackie Chan has been doing parkour-type work for YEARS. Why does this method of stunt-traveling have a FRENCH name?)
Acting: Gyllenhaal does satisfactory work as a Persian prince (although who knew lots of people in the ostensible Middle East had blue eyes?) and seems confident enough in the role. Arterton also does well enough (channeling Rachel Weisz's performance in the Mummy movies at time, but I was wondering how British accents ended up in the Middle East during the sixth century?) Add in Molina and Toussaint as basically a twist on a pirate and his henchman (think Han Solo and Chewbacca, or at least I did) as some comedy relief / muscle and your basic foursome moves the predictable plot along. Kingsley plays Kingsley. Has he done anything else since Gandhi? The only thing positive about his acting is that he didn't eat the scenery like Jeremy Irons is wont to do when he knows the film is popcorn fluff. The rest of the crew also perform decently enough to keep the audience in the film (okay, at this point basically no one has a Persian accent. They're either American or British. Is this a sign of things to come in the nineteenth/early twentieth centuries?)
Overall: Mediocre
Other Sites:
Wikipedia * IMDb * AllMovie * Rotten Tomatoes
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