Netflix Minute is a weekly feature highlighting a title from Netflix's catalog of instant view films. If you want to spend a night snuggled up with a bag of popcorn and don't want to drive to the video store, this is for you.
Prince of Persia tells the story of Dastan, who starts off as a orphan child who manages to impress the King of Persia in a brave attempt to save his friend from the local lawmen. The King adopts Dastan as his own son, who grows to be the youngest of three Princes who form the tip of Persia's militant spear. The Princes learn of the city of Alamut, which appears to be breaking its stance as a holy city to produce arms for Persia's enemies. In their siege of the city, Dastan attacks a horseman fleeing the city and obtains a dagger which is revealed to turn back time for the one who wields it.
The princes meet the leader of Alamut, Princess Tamina, who adamantly denies any forgery of weapons. Adding insult to injury, the Persian King Sharaman arrives at the city and rebukes his sons for making such a brash move on sacred ground. With the situation as unsteady as it was, the eldest prince Tus proposes that Tamina marry him to help maintain peace. Later, the brothers arrive at celebration of their victory and Dastan presents a robe given to him by Tus to his father as a gift for his presence. As the King wraps the garment around himself, it begins to burn his flesh to the effect of a quick death, leaving Dastan to flee the city and prove his innocence later.
Right at ground zero, it becomes fairly clear that Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is angling for a clever plot full of deception and backstabbing. While it certainly succeeds at this task, the writing fails to layer any true sense of mystery upon the passing events, as the lightly cloaked antagonist is fairly menacing and obvious from the start. Beyond that, the plot adopts a laborious, "humor" filled second act to balance out all of the self-serious events of exposition in the beginning and action at the end. This humor fell flat for me, stemming mostly from a performance from Alfred Molina that seemed awkward and inappropriate.
Furthermore, the performances seemed universally mediocre at best. As much as I like Jake Gyllenhaal (for whatever reason), his character comes off more as a light-hearted gymnast with excellent swordsmanship and a juvenile demeanor. Gemma Arterton isn't effective as Tamina either, though her character wasn't written to be more than a damsel in distress for Gyllenhaal's Dastan to save.
A Jerry Bruckheimer produced film with $200 million in pocket has a fair amount of advantages. The action scenes host entertaining fight choreography strapped onto excellent pacing, spiced up with plenty of parkour and nearly superhuman dodging. These moments truly compose the meat of the movie, keeping things moving despite a lackluster plot. While I was mostly satisfied in this aspect, I couldn't help but notice a bit too much slow-motion that only managed to numb my excitement for certain moments due to sheer repetition of the effect.
Ultimately, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time fits into a personal category of films lovingly labeled "popcorn movies". While it fails to deliver an Oscar-worth screenplay or deep characters, the movie managed to keep me entertained throughout by sheer force of swinging, punching, kicking, and knife-throwing. If you don't want to get wrapped up in a winding narrative and prefer a little bit of light viewing, you could do a whole lot worse than Prince of Persia.
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