Who would have dreamed that little Donnie Darko, Jake Gyllenhaal, would grow up to be a swollen-biceps action hero?
Gyllenhaal's presence in a Jerry Bruckheimer film is as unexpected as Nicolas Cage's was in the mid-'90s, when he segued from quirky comedy and drama to "The Rock" and "Con Air." But though Gyllenhaal's physique is as convincing, "Prince of Persia" doesn't look likely to make him quite the summer star Cage has proven to be.
The actor's swagger isn't big enough to compete with the production design in this visually rich film, and the baffling accent he has adopted doesn't help. But none of that keeps the adventure, based on a videogame with a long pedigree, from supplying a level of empty fun that's a notch or two above par within the silly-adaptations pack.
Gyllenhaal plays Dastan, an orphan who was adopted by the king as a child when he risked death to save a stranger. As an adult he's foolhardy but daring, the kind of prince Han Solo might have been, had he been more athletically inclined.
No, make that Indiana Jones. "Prince" sports magic treasures, a love/hate romantic interest (Gemma Arterton) and booby-trapped sites. It even has Alfred Molina (who fared badly in that first Indiana Jones film) supplying almost all the good comic lines: He plays a gambling mogul who has cultivated a murderous reputation to keep tax collectors at bay. Think of him as history's first tea partier.
The current-day topicality of Molina's references to taxes is no more accidental than references in the main plot, which involves a war waged on false pretenses, a search for weapons based on faked intelligence and a monarch urged by shady advisers to punish alleged wrongdoers without a proper trial. This is weird stuff to tack on to a dumb popcorn flick; viewers might debate what to make of it, if the film didn't swiftly move on to the next swordfight or rooftop chase.
Though that action is never boring, director Mike Newell often puts his camera so close to it that we can't take it all in. As a result, swordfights aren't as convincing as they should be and larger battles lack oomph. A few neat-o moments are overshadowed by the CGI re-creations of Persia and interior sets that make it seem like a great place to visit, even if we don't care to be invited back for a sequel.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Our grade: C+
Genre: Adventure
Running Time: 116 min
MPAA rating: PG-13 (Adult Situations, Violence)
Release Date: May 28, 2010
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