Prince of Persia - The Sands of Time

Cast

Jake Gyllenhaal as Dastan
Gemma Arterton as Tamina
Ben Kingsley as Nizam
Alfred Molina as Sheik Amar
Steve Toussaint as Seso
Toby Kebbell as Garsiv
Richard Coyle as Tus
Ronald Pickup as King Sharaman
Reece Ritchie as Bis
Gísli Örn Garðarsson as Hassansin Leader

Synopsis

Dastan is a poor street urchin, one day he saves his friend from a beating by the town guards. Unknown to Dastan or the guards, the king is watching, and he's touched seeing Dastan risk his life for his friend. Because of this the king adopts Dastan into his family.

Several years later Dastan and his brothers are camped outside a holy city, they are debating whether to attack, or leave the city as per their father's order. Suddenly they are confronted with a shipment of weapons which has left the city, and is heading to their enemies. This seals the fate of the city and the Persian's attack.

During the fight, Dastan comes into possession of a dagger, which seems to be of particular interest to the princess of the conquered city.

The king comes to celebrate the win, but Dastan has forgotten to buy a gift for the king. His brother gives him a cloak, but after the king wears the cloak poison seeps from it and the king is dead. Dastan is blamed for his murder, but with the help of the princess he escapes. How can he prove his innocence, and how will the dgger help him?

My Thoughts

I was pleasantly surprised by this film, it's a very westernised eastern story, but this doesn't detract from the film too much.

I've heard of the Prince of Persia from the video games, although I've never played them, so I wasn't sure what to expect, except that the trailers looked very similar to Assassins Creed II, a game I've played a lot. So presuming the Prince of Persia games are anything similar, then it's made a good transition from the games console to the big screen. I read since that the film doesn't follow the plot of the game, which seems to be the norm these days, as Avatar was just the same.

The casting was good, although Jake Gyllenhaal was a little too 'designer stubble' rather than natural stubble in his looks, but he plays the part very well. The choreography for the fight scenes is done very well, especially the assassin whips, which are done so fast you can barely keep up with them. The only actor I've actually heard of is Ben Kingsley, but not having big names didn't affect the film.

The cgi graphics were good, if I didn't know that film companies are too stingy to hire hundreds of actors, I would certainly have believed that the hordes of people were real. And the last few scenes where the story comes to a climax is pure cgi, but it's still good.

A well recommended film, I took my 12 year old son, who absolutely loved it, I can see us having to buy the DVD when it comes out as well.