A sword of two edges: a balanced review

Rating: 7/10 (12 June 2010)

Prince of Persia is one of the few games that have an interesting enough plot to turn into a movie. Another example is the successful Resident Evil, which is an interesting twist on the zombie genre.This movie uses those interesting narrative points well enough to make it an engaging, entertaining movie. The directing is effective, as is the acting(whatever the hell Ebert was complaining about, I missed it) and the visuals are incredibly well done. I feel I must however explain what well done means to me: it doesn't mean an impossible world with good textures and a lot of camera gimmicks, like that of Avatar, but rather a plausible world where CGI is invisible enough to make one not think about it while enjoying the picture.
Now that the good is out of the way, let me say the rest: it is not a brilliant, one of a kind movie. It uses narrative devices that we've seen over and over and it abandons character and narrative development too many times to replace it for action. And while I'd say much of the action is high quality and many people crave for it, in this case I felt the movie could have offered more, had it not been so divided between its story and the violent entries,far too easy to insert in such a tale.
Overall, I was entertained and highly appreciated the visuals(very true to the games). However, I felt more of an emotional impact in the end of the 2008 Prince of Persia game than I did at any point in the movie.
7/10