PRINCE OF PERSIA review: even the best video game adaptation isn’t good enough

PRINCE OF PERSIA review: even the best video game adaptation isn’t good enough

May 27

Everyone relax, the hot streak of piss-poor video-game-to-movie adaptations remains unbroken. Games cop a lot of flak for their silly scripts and dodgy voice acting, but in this case, the 2003 video game Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time is actually more stylish, coherent and charming than the 2010 movie version of the same name. How did that happen?

Within the first minute of Prince Of Persia I noticed three things that immediately took me out of the experience: an anonymous voice-over telling me what was going on; Papyrus font text (seriously — Papyrus?) telling me what was going on; and a hokey real-world map of Persia as it existed way back when, ostensibly to help me understand what was going on (as if the naff voiceover and Papyrus font hadn’t gotten through to me already). Where the game embraced most people’s ignorance of ancient and Middle-Eastern history by setting itself in a mystical, supernatural Persia that never really existed, film Prince Of Persia tries to legitimise itself, make us take it seriously, and falls flat on its face within seconds of the film’s opening.

Moving ahead, things don’t get better fast. After attempting to build Persia as a realistic, real-world place, Prince Of Persia then populates said country with dozens and dozens of well-tanned white people. Maybe they could only hire white people in Hollywood? And Morocco? Hmm. Anyway, one such white person, a ten-year-old street urchin by the name of Destan, defies the King and breaks the law and is sentenced to death, but then, of course, because he’s whiter than all the other extras, the King spares him and takes him on as his third son. As if white people didn’t go around with a big enough sense of entitlement already, this young white chap’s expectations of the world are now doubly inflated — resulting in a cranky and bland adult Destan, played by Jake Gyllenhaal. This street-urchin backstory could have easily been cut to save time and confusion, but the flaws don’t stop there.

Finally moving away from hokey exposition, what follows is a large action set-piece that is sadly about as good as it is bad. The action’s fast-paced but indistinct, and the shooting style is at once majestic yet impatient; what we really need this battle scene to do is introduce us to the Prince, but again it fails in its mission. Sure, we get a sense of how athletic and razor-sharp the Prince is, but we don’t get the sense of a real human being attempting these stunts — perhaps if he’d fumbled one of his jumps, just once in the entire film, he’d seem like one of us, and not some godlike gymnastic genuis.

The resulting stunts play like you’re watching over someone’s shoulder as they cheat their way through the video game, never once making a single mistake. This begs the question: why is the Prince so adept at Parkour and gymnastics? The answer is that the game was built on fluid, agile platforming. Gameplay like that just doesn’t translate well to the big screen, and the film suffers for its adherence to the source material.

The opening action scene also serves to introduce us to the film’s confused visual style. There are grainy digital close-ups here and there, the action is punctuated with jarring post-processed slow-motion effects that are ugly as sin to watch, and the action’s too close, always too close to get a clear bead on what the hell’s going on. Add to that a regular series of editorial non sequitors — suddenly they’re outside! Huzzah! — and watching “Prince’s” action scenes becomes a bit of a headache. Layer on top of that the infuriatingly ubiquitous bronzey lighting scheme and the film becomes a monotone headache at that.

After the big battle at the front of the film, things get a lot sillier and a lot quieter, and  the quiet scenes do little to help Prince Of Persia dig itself out of its mediocre hole. Instead of building a believable rapport between “Chesty” Jake Gyllenhaal’s Prince Destan and Gemma Arterton’s Princess Tamina (god, even the names sound goofy), the script is content with the kind of snarky one-up-manship lesser screenwriters get when they’re trying (unsuccessfully) to channel Han and Leia. Even by the end of the film, I felt like I didn’t know the characters at all, like they were still prickly strangers saying weird things to each other without a shred of chemistry or sincerity between them.

Speaking of Star Wars, “Prince” borrows liberally from the same character pool elsewhere, as well. Partway through the film a smuggler with dubious morals is introduced, set up as an honest but overly clever man, and even comes with his own pet savage: a life-bonded African bloke whose tribe name even rhymes with “Chewbacca.” As self-centred but ultimately loyal sidekicks, you know they’re gonna cop a hiding by the end of the film; everyone knows that when you abandon your mates to face the Death Star alone you’re gonna get laser-tortured in the next movie. Little predictable “homages” like this litter Prince Of Persia’s script, something which was handled a lot better — and with a lot more originality — in the superior Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl.

Eighteen months ago, when Gemma Arterton was still new to the world (in the woeful Quantum of Solace), she seemed like something of a rising star. She definitely had the kind of looks that help a young lass get by in the industry, and there appeared to be at least some potential for good acting in those big brown eyes of hers. Yet again and again she’s proven that she’s happy to just show up in a boys’ movie, pout a little, pretend to wave a sword, and then stand around while the lighting team spend hours getting the light to glisten on her lips just so. I don’t know if she’s just had a bad run of directors, but I’m yet to hear a convincing word pass those well-lit lips.

Struggling as best he can against a silly script and questionable direction is poor old Chesty Jake. Gone is Jake Gyllenhaal of old, all emotive eyes and honest, raw delivery; here now (hopefully not to stay) is stubbly, grumpy Chesty Jake, long on stunts but short on charm. Maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed like Chesty Jake was having a hard time getting through some of the lines — you could read it in his eyes: god this sounds stupid.

And then there’s the time travel, a tricky thing to get right at the best of times. You need to tie up (or at least cut off) all the loose ends, or the audience won’t be entirely satisfied. Prince Of Persia is content to let loose ends dangle in the wind unchecked, and this hurts the movie. Even the logical laws surrounding the time travel — who can use it, when, how much, why — aren’t clearly restricted, so the audience goes into the time-stopping finale with more confusion than anticipation.

And that’s where the film version of Prince Of Persia really falls down, ultimately. Mike Newell’s (Harry Potter 4) unsure direction — witness the Papyrus font and voiceover at the start, the weak performances from folk as esteemed as Ben Kingsley — could have been salvaged if the story had been strong. But it’s not. In fact, it barely makes sense. I still don’t understand why the Dagger (that controls time) even exists in the first place, and my impression of the film’s mythology is hazy at best. Pile on top of that the fact that every major character in the film dies at least once (fear not! Time travel = resurrection) and Prince Of Persia comes out looking like a very strange flick indeed, invoking eye-rolls more often than gasps of excitement.

For an “epic” film, The Prince Of Persia is strangely constricting. Instead of a cast of dozens, there are only about a dozen speaking roles (you can count how many of those are female with one finger). The settings ping-pong between a few digital cities, with no real sense of time, place or distance. The $150m budget barely shows up on screen — the visual effects are unconvincing, the photography (from Oscar-winning Aussie John Seale — he shot BMX Bandits back in the day!) is mixed at best, the epic battle scenes are mostly cheated, and even the bright beautiful dawn at the start of the film is built out of pixels.

While Prince Of Persia is probably the best video game adaptation of all time, it still isn’t a very good movie in its own right, falling short even of the low standards set by the Disney / Bruckheimer-produced Pirates sequels. Serviceable action, solid production design and a couple of good lines save it from being a complete disaster. It really makes you wonder where all the money went — my bet is shampoo and protein shakes for Chesty Jake.

Prince Of Persia score

36/100