The workings of the dagger are in any case somewhat murky when you push the button in its base, it makes you light up like Sylvester the Puddy Tat sticking a paw in an electric socket, and everyone fast-reverses into starting positions. It looked to me as if Garsiv was killed on two occasions, yet is around for the end of the movie, and I don't think the Dagger of Time was involved in either event. Exactly how he is saved of this predicament isn't exactly clear. Dastan, for example, seems to fall into a vast sinkhole as the sand is sucked from beneath him at dizzying speed. The irritating thing about special effects is that anything can happen, and often you can't tell what the hell it is. Imagine the scene! Gemma in foreground, Jake right behind her, compressed by telephoto, jerking up and down at terrific speed while sand dunes whiz past on the green screen in the background. My interest perked up with the prospect that Dastan and Tamina might try to flee by ostrich-back, but no luck. Their flight brings them under the sway of the film's obligatory comic supporting character, Sheik Amar ( Alfred Molina), a con man who runs rigged ostrich races, and those who have tried to fix an ostrich race will know that the bloody ostriches are impossible to reason with. Of course this must all lead to Tamina and Dastan fleeing from the evil Nizam, who has framed the lad for regicide.
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The plot involves portentous dialogue (“The only way to stop this Armageddon is for us to take the dagger to the Secret Guardian Temple”), which separate tiresome CGI sequences in which clashing warriors do battle in shots so brief we can see people getting whacked, but have no conception of actual physical space. She possesses the Dagger of Time, which is an honest-to-God WMD, since if it's switched on too long, all the sands of time will run out, and it's back to the Big Bang. He can't even go to a Disney swashbuckler without running into finger-wagging.)Īnyway, Dastan climbs the city walls, pours flaming oil on its guards, etc., and then encounters the beautiful Princess Tamina ( Gemma Arterton). King Sharaman has ordered the city not be sacked, but nooo, Nizam has secret information that Alamut is manufacturing weapons of mass destruction for Persia's enemies. This is a beautiful city surrounding a towering castle.
#Prince of persia sand of time review movie#
He did it in real time, with little trampolines hidden in the pots, and six pots in that movie are worth the whole kitchen in this one.Īnyway, the evil Nizam insists that the Persian army invade the peaceful city of Alamut. Fairbanks has a 1924 scene where he hops from one giant pot to another. This is all achieved with special effects, ramped up just fast enough to make them totally unbelievable. He also can leap from back to back in a herd of horses, jump across mighty distances, climb like a monkey and spin like a top.
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The king has a brother named Nizam ( Ben Kingsley), first seen in a sinister closeup that could be subtitled, “I will turn out to be the villain.” He has a van Dyke beard and eyes that glower smolderingly.ĭastan is good at running on rooftops.
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The names of the movie's characters seem to have been created by a random-word generator. (1924) and Michael Powell (1940) versions of “ The Thief of Bagdad.”ĭastan is adopted by the king, and raised with two brothers, Garsiv ( Toby Kebbell) and Tus ( Richard Coyle). He's an orphan his birth parents are two movies, the Douglas Fairbanks Sr. This is Dastan, who will grow up to be played by Jake Gyllenhaal. One day in the marketplace, he sees a brave young urchin defend a boy being beaten, and escape pursuit by running across rooftops. That city is ruled by the noble King Sharaman ( Ronald Pickup). Fair enough, since Persia reaches “from the steppes of China to the shores of the Mediterranean,” but it's even more impressive since it's all within a day's journey from the capital city. This is a land with truly astonishing landscapes: deserts, canyons, craggy monument valleys and a mountain range that resembles the Himalayas. The movie is set in ancient Persia, which is now named Iran.