Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010–116mins) J. Gyllenhaal, B. Kingsley,G. Atherton, A. Molina

   When a movie is a blockbuster action release they always put out a video game for it, and 99.999% of the time it sucks. Other times they put out a movie based on a video game. Some of these suck (Doom, Super Mario Bros), and some of these are decent (Resident Evil). This movie based on a series of video games, but most notably the game which re-started the excitement of the franchise back in 2003. This was a game which was just simply brilliant, even for the original XBOX! It had good controls, combos, and the all new reverse time mechanic. But, back to the new movie. Of course there was a TON of hype for the movie. For me, it lived up to the hype to a certain extent but more importantly it was just a good movie.

   Allow me this few mins to get on my soapbox, as usual, to bitch about the role of media and mostly critics to deep six this movie’s rep and ultimately hurt it’s box office. Right from the beginning the media just wanted to shoot this movie down. This lead to their own hype machine influencing reviewers to blast it as well. And such the people just stayed away.  To date the movie has only made in the area of 90 million (per IMDB). These newspaper and Internet reviewers all jumped on board like the lemmings they are. They are an embarrassment to the industry. These are the people who just can’t get enough of boring pieces of crap like Out Of Africa, and just can’t sit back and enjoy a fun romp in the desert like Price of Persia. These morons shouldn’t be paid for their works, and what even bothers me more is they get paid to watch movies and get to see them before we all do! Piss on you movie critics. [[Steps off soapbox]]

   Ok back to the movie at hand. The movie revolves around the adoptive price Dastan (Gyllenhaal) who stumbles upon a fabled magical dagger while the empire is invading a holy city they believe to be selling swords to their enemies. After all this Dastan is framed for killing his adoptive father,the king, and the adventure begins. He escapes with the magical dagger and the princess of the captured city who is also the protector of the dagger’s secrets. The Dagger in question has the ability to turn back time which initially we think is a secret but it turns out more people know about it then we think. The big adventure is finding out who framed Dastan and trying to get the dagger to safety. It’s a nice fast paced actiony flick with some humor thrown in there as well. One of the great things I loved is all the homages to the orig. gameplay. The climbing up walls, various acrobatics, swinging from the rafters, and the funny banter between Dastan and the princess really hit home well with me and just made me want to break out my X-Box and play the old classic. The story is good, the effects are good, and it’s an easy to follow movie as well.

   Some people won’t like an aspect of the ending which I thought played well with the plot and yet still left me satisfied. And at just under 2 hours I am happy with the time b/c of it being a summer blockbuster but that could be a turn off to some as well. It’s really 2 movies rolled into one. Dastan saving his name and then them trying to save the dagger. I think it’s a good movie for a sat night with the family. (It’s PG-13  prolly mostly b/c of violence and a bunch of snakes in it).

Verdict—> This is a great rental for anyone. Good action flick for a weekend with the fam or for a date night. I reccomend this as a rental , and in fact I will prolly even buy it on Blue-Ray to see how great it looks. Grab it ASAP if it’s there when you go renting.

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