Prince of Persia

Prince of Persia was pretty terrible. I first heard of it, or at least, paid any attention to it, when the girl who used to go to capoeira who also worked in a CG studio told us about it, and how it was about the worst film she’d ever seen. I have no way of knowing how much she saw or what parts she worked on, but while she was being too harsh, really, it still was very poor overall. For the first time in a long while, I was actually struggling to stay awake.

While I used to like the old 80s game, and often played it on my hard-drive-less PC because it was one of the only games I had that would run from a single floppy, obviously the franchise has moved on significantly. The film told the story of a young streetrat from the Persian empire (where we learn, possibly with some surprise, that just about everyone is good-looking, white and speaks with an English accent, which is strange, because 300 led us to believe your average Persian was monstrous, black and effete) who is adopted by a king, helps his brothers to fight their wars and gets tangled up in a plot that doesn’t make much sense (Ben Kingsley’s character could have moved with great slyness to reach his goal, the assassinations essentially being pointless), as well as discovering the strange magic of a dagger containing the Sands of Time.

The big problem is that everyone is so unlikeable. Despite Gyllanhall’s usual likeability, newfound heroic figure and suddenly dashing looks, his character is an annoying knob who likes to flip about while murdering people, spout witticisms and flout his orders just to act smug. His accent often has too much of the chimney sweep, too. The princess is supposed to be charmingly prickly, but is just tiresome and wooden. Ben Kingsley is so much better than this, and even the ostrich-loving comic relief character is underwritten and superfluous. With engaging characters, the clichéd plot and lazy magical contrivances could have worked, but this? Nah.