Prince Of Persia: The Waste Of Time

Rating: 5/10 (13 June 2010)

Prince Of Persia starts off with some promise considering that it's just another conventional summer popcorn film. It has a nice little origin back story for it's hero and then a visually interesting opening action sequence. With the introduction to the mystical dagger though, the film quickly moves into a messy narrative that is so predictable that you would think that you time traveled backwards from the ending.
Jake Gyllenhaal puts in his best effort to play his cardboard one dimensional hero. Gemma Arterton is gorgeous and seems to have a nice chemistry with Gyllenhaal. Ben Kingsley is totally wasted here as he could have been played by a cut out of Dr. Evil. Alfred Molina is actually a highlight in the film performance wise but his character is totally pointless other than offering some comic relief.
The CGI effects are pretty impressive but are also so excessive that they take away believability and make you feel as though you are still playing the video game. The action scenes follow the same pattern of being impressive but too over the top. You need the audience to feel threatened for the hero and it's hard to do that when the hero can leap tall buildings in a single bound and dodge around collapsing structures like he's in The Matrix.
It is a well known fact that the ending is the most important part of any story. Sure the beginning is important for investing the audience with introducing them to the characters and the world they live in and the middle is important for raising the stakes. However it's what happens at the end of the film that resonates with the audience the most. Everything in the film is building towards the ending and with out the proper pay off the structure of the film falls apart. This is the case with the ending of this film. With out spoiling anything, something happens at the end that leaves the viewer feeling like the last hour and a half of the film was a waste of time. That is never something an audience member should feel. Stories should feel like journey's that the audience takes along with the characters. If the journey feels pointless than movie feels incomplete.
If the film had found a way of making the journey worth while in the end than I would have given it a slightly higher rating. I mean the movie wasn't with out some charms. It did have entertainment value despite all it's flaws. However it failed in it's ending and left a bad last impression on top of all it's other short comings. I wish I had the tagger so that I can turn the sands of time back to tell myself to just wait for this one on rental.