Insipid like a 1980s music video

Rating: 3/10 (5 July 2010)

A triumph of the dead-eyed purveyor of schlock over the imagination.
The imagery in this film made me think of all those fantasy illustrations you used to be able to find in Athena poster shops in the 1980s: scantily-clad big-boobed maiden/warrior princesses, warriors with scimitars and lots of greasy long hair. Bring on the sport rock. When did that rubbish become desirable? I was interested enough to watch the film because it looked like a decent cast; but I should have known that Bruckheimer was behind it, making it all bigger, dangit, bigger! And louder! More sand! More swords! Those tits aren't big enough – hoist 'em! And so we all get exactly what we deserve: a poorly thought-out "epic" in name only.
Jake Gyllenhaal and Gemma Arterton are both likable actors, but here, very much a second-rate Luke Skywalker and Princess Leah combo, being pulled through the labyrinth of the plot as if by a piece of invisible wool. Their characters reminded me of fruit in British supermarkets: it looks like a strawberrybut it doesn't taste like anything in particular. Alfred Molina stole (saved!) the show not only with the best lines, but with the film's only really funny delivery.
I've never seen such appalling editing in a major Hollywood film. Clearly the director often couldn't be bothered to show how an action set piece developed from shot to shot – so they just show the character, now in one place (e.g. leaping across columns), now in another (just arrived on a racing horse), and these obvious 'logic' gaps strip the film of believability. Of course, that's what happens in video games too, isn't it? No pesky explanation shots keeps things moving faster for all those goldfish-attention spans. I thought the point (if there is one apart from profit) of bringing a video game to the big screen, was exactly to fill in all the bits the video game leaves out, to generate some magic up there. But no one cares about its faults – the makers are so busy making money and looking at future merchandising and franchise options.
If scripts are bad and over-referential now, imagine how awful they'll be when future scriptwriters have material like this to refer back to. And I'm not even going to begin talking about the consistent 1950s-style casting of anglo-saxon white people as Persians. It's not as if this film is a first for that; and besides, what fan of this film would care anyway? I feel soiled and used.