Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Based on the classic video game, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time follows Jake Gyllenhaal’s heroic Dastan as he teams up with a mysterious princess (Gemma Arterton’s Tamina) to stop a diabolical madman from destroying the universe. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time has been infused with as relentlessly slick and thoroughly mindless a feel as one has come to expect from producer Jerry Bruckheimer, with the film’s empty-headed sensibilities reflected most prominently in its consistently uninvolving storyline and its proliferation of hopelessly underdeveloped characters. The viewer’s ongoing difficulties in working up any interest in Dastan’s perilous exploits are exacerbated by Mike Newell’s decidedly incompetent directorial choices, as the filmmaker proves unable to inject any of the movie’s many action sequences with even an ounce of genuine excitement (or even coherence) – with the less-than-enthralling vibe stemming primarily from Newell’s reliance on shaky camerawork, rapid-fire editing, and a whole host of other entirely needless stylistic tricks (and this is to say nothing of the chintzy, downright laughable barrage of computer-generated special effects). The pervasively dull atmosphere persists right through to the expectedly overblown (and downright unintelligible) finale, and it’s ultimately impossible to label Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time as anything more than a pointless and aggressively bland big-budget disaster.

*1/2 out of ****