Grade: B+In medieval Persia, King Sharaman is a very happy and prosperous king. His kingdom is thriving and he has two sons ready to take over the kingdom when they are ready. One day while traveling through a market, he witnesses a young orphan boy’s amazingly selfless act of heroism. King Sharaman decides to adopt the young boy and raises him in the palace. The boy, Dastan, grows up to be a great warrior in the king’s army. One day, the army is told to invade a holy city as they are believed to be making and supplying weapons to their enemy. In the city, Prince Dastan discovers a magical dagger that controls time. During the celebration of the victory over the city, Dastan is framed for the murder of his father and flees the city. Dastan decides to team up with the Princess from the holy city in order to uncover the conspiracy to frame him and discovers somebody wants to unleash a sandstorm that would destroy the world as they know it.
Most movies based on video games don’t tend to turn out all that well. This one, however, was a pleasant surprise and was very enjoyable to watch. The plot is actually pretty engaging and you can tell that the writers put some thought into it for once. The action is a lot of fun mixed in with bits of humor. I was definitely afraid that Disney was trying too hard to make another movie like Pirates of the Caribbean and that they were going to fail and that this movie was going to be a lot of flash but with no story. Well, they proved me wrong, this movie hold itself up very well. The only problem that I really had with this movie is that the movie takes place during the Persian reign and in fact takes place in the Persian Empire and all of the characters are Persian, however, all of the actors are white and seem to be speaking with more of a British accent than a Persian accent.
Jake Gyllenhaal (Jarhead, Donnie Darko) plays the lead role of the orphan turned prince, Dastan. Gyllenhaal did a really great job with the role and was better than I was expecting him to be, he really helped hold the movie together. Gemma Arterton (Clash of the Titans, RocknRolla) played the role of a holy Princess, Tamina. Arterton was fantastic in this role and really made the movie worth watching. I hope she continues to get larger roles in movies. Alfred Molina (An Education, The Da Vinci Code) plays the role of Sheik Amar. I was pleasantly surprised to see Molina in this movie, he was very enjoyable and pretty funny too. Ben Kingsley (Shutter Island, You Kill Me) played the role of Dastan’s uncle, Nizam. Kingsley did a wonderful job with this role, as he always does with his roles, and really helped hold everything together.
I would defiantly recommend this movie to anyone looking to a just plain entertaining actionish movie. It is a lot of fun to watch and like I said, it’s just plain entertainment. If you have to choose between this and Sex and the City 2 this weekend, or ever, pick this movie, you won’t walk out of the theater and in front of a bus.
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