Cops and Robbers

September brings a whole new season, and with it many changes. Around the country, leaves change color and fall from the trees, the sun sets earlier and earlier, and Hollywood starts churning out the movies they think will actually have a chance of making an impression on critics and moviegoers. Yes, hidden amid the glut of Summer blockbusters and early-year critical fodder have been several intriguing films, including The Place Beyond the Pines, Mud, Fruitvale Station and The Way, Way Back. But with the soon-to-be-released likes of 12 Years a Slave, Gravity, Saving Mr. Banks, American Hustle, The Wolf of Wall Street... I could go on, but you get the picture. The coming months are so jam-packed with Oscar bait that even movies that would have been sure things a year or so ago will almost certainly find themselves on the outside looking in. Autumn (and winter afterward) brings with it the Big Boys, and the first officially serious candidate to rear its head is Denis Villeneuve's ensemble title Prisoners.

Jackman trying out as the "older, weathered" Bruce Wayne, perhaps?

In his follow-up to the Academy Award-nominated Canadian Incendies, Villeneuve takes his all-star cast and pits them against an unenviable foe when the daughters of friends Keller Dover (a poorly-monikered Hugh Jackman) and Franklin Birch (Terrence Howard) are kidnapped in broad daylight near their suburban homes. The police and Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) apprehend prime suspect Alex Jones (Paul Dano), only to discover no evidence linking the mentally-underdeveloped man-child with the crime. Days pass without any clues, and with the families driven mad by the tragedy, Keller decides that the only way he will see his daughter alive is if he takes matters into his own hands.

Oh, wait, he just has that face all the time.

It's the above-mentioned veteran actors - plus talented performers like Viola Davis, Maria Bello, and Melissa Leo - who give Prisoners it's most compelling strength, with Jackman front and center as a distraught father who desperate choices in an attempt to rescue his daughter. Since Jackman so often appears in relatively simple action films like The Wolverine and Real Steel, it's always wonderful to be surprised by the acting muscles he doesn't often flex, even if they belong to such a dark and despondent plot. Jackman owns his material, and while I am ragging on him in the photo comments about his stone-carved angry face, he does so much with vocal inflection and his actions that it makes up for any other weaknesses in his performance. Gyllenhaal also stands out, though a lack of character development means that those easily-recognizable demons from his past (which manifest themselves in neck tattoos and conspicuous eye twitches) are never explained. The film splits its time between those two actors, and not once do they fail to keep you hooked.

A little help from the rest of the cast.

Now if only the rest of the cast had been treated as reverently as the two leads. After the first act, I assumed Dano would be my favorite actor in this. Besides the fact that he has some great films on his resume (Little Miss Sunshine, Ruby Sparks and Looper just to start), Dano is a natural talent who is really going into new territory with this role. As the mentally-disabled prime suspect, he puts real fear in the audience in his early scenes. But sadly, despite still playing a major role in the remaining acts, he is relegated to the background. The rest of the supporting cast is also misused, most getting one or two front-and-center scenes before fading back into obscurity. It's certainly not due to talent issues; this is one of the best-collected casts in recent memory, with more than enough ability to keep things interesting. Given more to do, they might have helped improve the film's mood, as well as director Villeneuve's pacing. Instead, they are mostly wasted.

He still can't believe he graduated from the Police Academy.

And it's the hands of Villeneuve where Prisoners gets a little sketchy. He gets some great performances out of his actors, and knows how to perfectly frame a shot. The director's technical prowess is certainly not my concern here. However, he might have been given a bit too much control over the movie's final release this past weekend. For one, the film is two-and-a-half hours long. Typically, I don't care about length; unlike many ADHD-riddled moviegoers, I can actually sit through a movie that's longer than an hour and a half and not be fidgety by time the credits roll, so long as the movie is actually good. I'm willing to sit through such a long film when the time is actually used to tell the story, as opposed to relatively short films who use so much filler you have to wonder about why they got made in the first place. Sometimes I even think that standard two-hour movies SHOULD add another twenty minutes to flesh out certain characters or elaborate on particular plot points, which would have made all the difference in the world. But Villeneuve tries to mimic the pacing of award-winning thrillers like The Usual Suspects with mixed results. Scenes are deliberately paced, there are far too many side-plots, and the red herrings become far too distracting as the story leads to a formulaic, mediocre ending. By my reckoning, an entire subplot containing a copycat kidnapper could have been cut without any major issues, perhaps to the benefit of allowing the side characters to become more significant (okay, I'm done with that rant). I'm rarely a fan of studios clamping down on a director's "artistic vision", but this was a situation where Warner Brothers perhaps should have stepped in and requested some cuts to the final product.

Obligatory pointing-of-the-gun cliche.

Perhaps Villeneuve just got a little overly-excited about directing his first American feature. He's still a talented director, but his treatment of Prisoners wasn't his best effort at expressing that ability. He's got a great cast, a solid story and the perfect mood, but the material doesn't quite gel in the way it really ought to. It's still a decent flick, and one I'd recommend for a decent DVD perusal. But awards bait this is not, likely forgotten in a few months time. It's truly a shame, as with the talent involved, it could have easily turned into one of the year's best. In a nutshell, that  is the difference between potential and the real world.

Two Days 'Til Retirement

In a weekend where there were four major theatrical releases, at least two high-ceiling limited releases and one major expansion into wide release, there's one reason that people didn't go out and enjoy Dredd, an excellent genre flick which sadly finished in sixth place at the box office and hasn't gotten the love it deserves. It wasn't House at the End of the Street or The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which mostly attracted young women. It wasn't Trouble with the Curve, which appealed mainly to older folks. And it wasn't The Master, which is more like Oscar bait than blockbuster. No, for a film appealing mainly to young men, Dredd was hampered by the fact that most of their potential audience was instead down the hall with End of Watch. This movie is perfectly in director David Ayer's wheel house. The writer/director has been basing his stories in Los Angeles for over a decade, and he's best known for the man who wrote Training Day, which won Denzel Washington an Oscar and is this century's epitome of Los Angeles crime drama. All this time later, and Ayer still has stories to tell about the LAPD, though thankfully they're not all about corruption and scandal, as he proves here.

Just another day in the office.

Police officers and best friends, Officers Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Mike Zavala (Michael Pena) are two of the hottest shots, regularly seen patrolling the worst areas of South Central Los Angeles. End of Watch details their close friendship, rivalries and pranks with other officers, and their everyday lives, which include Zavala's expecting a child with wife Gabby (Natalie Martinez) and Taylor's burgeoning romance with a Janet (Anna Kendrick), whom he meets at school. When the duo discover an even darker side to the city in the form of the Mexican drug cartels, Taylor and Zavala find themselves on the wrong side of Hispanic gangs that have lately been rising in prominence in the area. One night, that brewing conflict will all come to a very violent conclusion

No, ma'am, this isn't Magic Mike.

Strangely, though, that finale really takes its time to come around, meaning that most of the first two acts of the film are not intensely focused on the cartels but the everyday challenges of being a beat cop in LA. Having had a grandfather on the force in Atlantic City, I appreciate how the movie took care to present the men and women of the law as normal people with families and problems and times both good and bad. Ayer humanizes his heroes, and while they're considered among the best of their class, Taylor and Zavala are still unpredictable, prone to both mistakes and heroics. Most importantly, they're men who love their jobs, which makes it incredibly easy to root for them.

Paperwork: the stuff that keeps the world spinning.

Ayer also makes an effort to portray the story from a gritty, street-level perspective. To that end, he has incorporated the popular "found footage" method by showing the footage as being recorded by the two officers via a handicam and some fairly sophisticated flash cameras attached to their uniforms, all as part of a college project for Taylor. It does a great job of making much of the film feel natural and off the cuff, but it does present its own set of problems. For one, while it's feasible for some police helicopter footage to make its way into the film to present a sense of scale, some of the movie contains far less likely cam footage, for instance from the perspective of the Latino gang that just happens to be recording their own misdeeds at the same time as our heroes. It's far less natural than the police footage, and gives far too much away, as I would have preferred more mysterious and less predictable antagonists. Also, the found footage attempt turns in a few clunkers, as more than a few occasions see scenes apparently not captured by anybody's camera, but are shot just the same. Ayer is quoted as saying (in an interview on Open Letters Monthly) that if you're wondering who is carrying the camera, then he lost you. Well, as a critic, he did lose me. It wasn't often, but occasionally my thought process turned to the fact that nobody could have been casually shooting at a certain moment. Thankfully, those were few and far between, and most of the camera efforts were done well enough to escape serious scrutiny.

...And there was much rejoicing.

Of course, none of this would have been worth anything if not for the excellent acting and chemistry of leads Gyllenhall and Pena. Ayer did a great job preparing the two actors for their constant partnership throughout the film, and it really shows in their ability to bounce seemingly random things off one another from scene to scene while still remaining relevant to the story. Gyllenhaal has struggled to define himself in modern Hollywood, going from young talent to pseudo action star to the character-driven performances in which he often excels. While he has sometimes struggled with consistency, that doesn't happen here, and he brings his special brand of intensity that often worms its way into his best work. Pena meanwhile has always been excellent, while not necessarily getting the choicest roles (the lot of Latinos in the movie industry, unfortunately). Still, he's often the best part of even bad movies, and he rewards Ayer's confidence in him by simply being the most wonderful, animated thing on the screen at any given time. Together the pair's antics are as authentic as anything I've seen in theaters this year, and their interaction with the surrounding landscape looks completely natural and familiar. While the film mainly centers around its leads, the pair get a lot of support from Kendrick and Martinez, as well as Frank Grillo, America Ferrera, Cody Horn and David Harbour as their fellow officers.

...here's the bad news...

The only real problem with End of Watch is its mess of an ending, which is almost completely predictable if you actually pay attention to the story (or the trailers, for that matter), and understand the usual cop movie cliches. This isn't really a surprise, as Ayer seems to like his tragedy-laden final acts, and to be fair it really doesn't feel out of place in the grand scheme of things. But for once I would love to be surprised, and Ayer just isn't the director who is going to do that for me. End of Watch is still an inspired production, with much more to like than not. Ayer needs to up his writing skills though, especially if he's going to keep working around treatments of the same subject matter. While I still believe Dredd is the best option for you action lovers in theaters right now, End of Watch is a more than solid second option while awaiting Looper's release this coming weekend.

Attack at the Source

This past weekend was a fairly good one for films. While it's true that the box office was dominated by the debut of the horrible-looking Easter animated film Hop, there were two more new releases to whet the appetite of moviegoers over the age of eight: the creepy horror film Insidious and the sci-fi thriller Source Code. Of the two, the Duncan Jones-helmed Source Code held the most interest, as it had a cast of considerable talent alongside the same directorial skills that brought us the fantastic science fiction drama Moon. This isn't to suggest I thought the fit would be perfect; Moon was Jones's debut, so there was every chance that the second film by David Bowie's kid would see his promise fall back down to Earth somewhat. Also there's the Gyllenhaal factor to consider; star Jake Gyllenhaal isn't necessarily known for picking the best films, not with clunkers like Prince of Persia, The Day After Tomorrow and Brothers on his resume. Still, the film's premise was unique enough to be truly intriguing, and if everything went right Source Code had the chance to be one of the more memorable films of 2011.

Unfortunately, the bomb happened to be on the 8:45 train, NOT the 9:15

Gyllenhaal plays Captain Colter Stevens, an Army helicopter pilot who suddenly finds himself on a train outside the city of Chicago. He's traveling with a woman he's never met named Christina (Michelle Monaghan), and soon after discovers that the face in a restroom mirror does not even belong to him, but someone else entirely. Soon after this revelation, a bomb explodes on the rail car, killing everyone aboard. Stevens then wakes back up in his own body, sealed into a man-made chamber with a video feed that puts him in communication with his superiors at a top-secret military program. Though he has no memory of volunteering for this mission, his liaison by the name of Captain Goodwin (Vera Farmiga) briefs him that his vision on the train is from his entering a computer simulation known as the Source Code. In the program, the user assumes the identity of a particular person (in this case teacher Sean Fentress) in the last eight minutes of his life. In this way the program directors hope to discover who blew up the train, and to prevent future bombings with that information. And so Stevens must constantly go back, each trip bringing him closer to discovering the truth not only about his mission, but also about himself.

They won't be serving the Jabanero Voodoo Peppers in the snack car anymore

If you mixed Groundhog Day with a thriller like that of a James Bond flick, you pretty much have an idea as to how the story here works. Stevens is constantly thrown into the same situation and must change his approach every time to whittle away at the mystery before him. It's definitely an original concept, and that alone is worth the price of admission. But unfortunately it's not nearly executed so nicely as Jones has been capable of doing in the past. While the director does a fine job - and with a limited budget besides - there isn't a lot to love here. The constant traveling back to the same point gets tedious after a while, and no amount of variation can really make up for that. The story does have some humorous elements and one-liners, but more often than not they are overshadowed by the far more serious main tale. The film also lacks any real character development, at least for the secondary characters. Most, like Christina and the other passengers on the train, are learned in bare minimum, while the military characters who are not Stevens get little to work with. It doesn't help the viewer when we simply don't care who the actual terrorist is when we barely learned anything about them up to the point when we learned they were the evil mad-person.

Let's play a game of "Guess where I'm Staring?"

The film does have good acting to make up for the lack of development however, and Gyllenhaal rests atop that field as the best of the bunch. While Colter Stevens is given the benefit of actual character growth, Gyllenhaal makes it all worthwhile with his convincing portrayal of a somewhat amnesiac soldier willing to do anything for his country, but wishes he knew why. After impressing me with last year's Love and Other Drugs, Gyllenhaal makes another strong big for action hero status with this title. Unlike say, James Franco, Gyllenhaal is undeniably a different person in most of his roles and is not simply playing another variation on himself. Michelle Monaghan is surprisingly strong as Stevens's main love interest, though there's little for her to do besides react to the main character's apparent eccentricities. It was still a nice step up from what I thought was the weak link in Gone Baby Gone, and perhaps proving Monaghan has a real future in the business despite lacking what might be considered Hollywood brand beauty. Vera Farmiga might never get as good a role as good as Alex Goran in 2009's Up in the Air, but she still shows enough personality to make her military divorcee likable. It's a shame when an actress of her talent gets stuck in a do-nothing role, but sometimes the best you can do in that situation is to work it as best you can and hope good things come of it. The same might also be said for Jeffrey Wright, who is only slightly more interesting as he scientist who created the Source Code itself. Wright, who has to hobble on a cane for two hours a la Gregory House, has played much better characters in far better fare, but that said he comes out like the rest of the cast and does his job satisfactorily.

"This is your mission, should you choose to... oh, who am I kidding? You don't have a choice!"

By the end, we are left waiting for the narrative to finally peter out, as a great concept didn't quite have the staying power needed to remain interesting from beginning to end. As almost an added slight, the finale reeked of post-production test audience interference, and was far too overlong. Still, I can't help but like the things Source Code does right, even if those may seem few and far between. Well paced, well acted, and with strong effects and camera work despite a lesser budget, Source Code pulls in at #9 for 2011. It may not be Duncan Jones's best work, or anybody's for that matter. However, what really makes it count is the courage to take on an original concept and stick with it as long as it takes to finish.

Love and Lots of Sex

I'm not sure which surprised me more: Maggie Murdock (Anne Hathaway) exposing her boob less than five minutes after we meet her character in a doctor's office, or that Love & Other Drugs by it's finale had became one of my favorite films of the year. The romantic comedy by director Edward Zwick had drawn me in with a strong trailer and charismatic leads, and with most of the films I REALLY wanted to see unavailable to me or forthcoming, I decided to dedicate my time and money to this film, which if nothing else looked interesting and original.

Chinese food in bed is step #22 in Dating for Wimps

Loosely based on the book Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman by Huffington Post blogger Jamie Reidy, Love takes place in the late 1990's and introduces to us salesman Jamie Randall (Jake Gyllenhaal), a college dropout working as a clerk at a small-time electronics store, where he has used his charm - especially with the ladies - to be the best salesman at the store. Fired shortly after the film's opening for engaging in sexual conquest with one of his fellow employees, Jamie gets help from his millionaire brother (Josh Gad) and is hired as a salesman for Pfizer, the commercial drug giant. Tasked with selling Zoloft and Zithromax in the Ohio River Valley, Jamie happens to meet Maggie, a free spirit who suffers from stage one Parkinson's Disease. She's the first woman who doesn't immediately fall for Jamie's charms, and what begins as a raunchy one night stand eventually changes for both of them, as both begin to experience love for the first time.

Quick! It's the 80's and you're Tom Cruise! Go!

Love & Other Drugs is only the second romantic comedy directed by Zwick, who's only other title from that genre is 1986's About Last Night. While his other efforts in the meantime have been more serious dramas such as Courage Under Fire, The Last Samurai, and Blood Diamond, the pacing in this film shows that he hasn't lost his touch in that area. The film flows at a good pace and never feels forced, allowing the story to be told to us at a comfortable level and never dropping things upon our heads that we wouldn't understand. As director and as one of the film's screenwriters, Zwick takes something that might not appeal to most audiences - mainly the operations of American pharmaceutical corporations - and manages to wrap a story around it that we can instantly connect with on an almost personal level. Not only that, but the film doesn't suffer from being aimed at teens or a younger audience. It's an adult romance, never overly smarmy or unbelievable in it's portrayal of a mature adult relationship.

Trying to avoid another "Brokeback" moment

Zwick is helped immensely by his leading actors. Hathaway is simply amazing, her performance subtle and emotional, a character who struggles to be independent even with the knowledge that a disease with no cure will slowly take he life and self-reliance away from her. It's easy to see why Jamie falls so easily for her, and why he would do anything for her. Don't mistake her for a damsel in distress however; she doesn't like the idea of being tied down, and falls in love on her own terms, not his. We knew Hathaway would be good, but Gyllenhaal is the surprise here. Though he tried before to cultivate a career of playing disturbed characters (Donnie Darko, Jarhead) or performing in serious drama (Brokeback Mountain, Zodiac), it was his charming role in the otherwise-repulsive Prince of Persia that I began to suspect his talents as a romantic leading man. The result is one of the best performances I've seen from him, that of the aimless guy who went for so many years simply getting by, only now learning what's important to him and how to care. The two actors have amazing chemistry, and I don't just mean in the bedroom. Every conversation we're witness to is an intellectual treat, as they all make us feel right there in the scene, intertwined in the elegance of speech and the occasional rampaging emotion. Both are so believable that you'd think the two actors were the ones in love, not just the characters.

If Anne Hathaway suddenly strips in your foyer, make sure you're the only one home

It's a shame the secondary characters aren't as enticing as the leads, but that might be asking too much. That isn't to say that the supporting cast is bad, quite the opposite in fact, simply that Hathaway and Gyllenhaal raise the bar far higher than any of the others can reach. Oliver Platt plays Jamie's veteran partner and mentor, training him in the hard art of the sell while aspiring to get the promotion to Chicago so he can be with his family again. For this, Platt puts on his usual scene chewing performance, the same one we've been privy to since forever. Gabriel Macht plays a drug representative from a rival firm with a romantic history with Maggie. There's really not much to say about him, as he loses precious screen time long before the final credits. He's solid when given the chance however. Josh Gad plays Jamie's brother, but his role is somewhat unrealistic and obviously plugged in as a cheap comedic role and a link to Jamie's family history. He works when he's used, and thankfully in small doses, but the idea that Jamie's millionaire brother ends up sleeping on his poorer sibling's couch for about two-thirds of the film does seem a bit unlikely, even if it is because Jamie is his big brother. The best of the group however might be Hank Azaria, who plays the top general practitioner in the region, Dr. Knight. Though he at first comes off as simply an asshole, Knight eventually reveals to us a side disenfranchised with the state of the medical industry, barred by red tape and constantly scrutinized by lawyers waiting for that one big mistake. It's by far the deepest character I've seen from Azaria, whose mostly comedic roles have been doubtlessly funny if a bit shallow.

Unhappy Anne makes us ALL sad...

There is a bit in the middle where we're reminded that the film has basis in real life. I had been wondering why the film used the real names of drug companies and drugs when the turning point of the film turned out to be the company's release of the sex drug Viagra. Suddenly stuff starts happening, and the impact of Viagra is obvious to anybody living today; it was the wonder drug that completely changed the industry, and to blanket that with a fake name would have reeked as obvious to anybody watching. Thankfully having this drug and it's parent company featured by name doesn't hurt the film in the slightest. Though it is portrayed that working in the drug industry is lucrative and the creation of Viagra is treated for the cultural event that it was, the film stops short of overly praising the company for being all-over wonderful. It also doesn't condemn the drug industry for its role in the highly profitable medical institution and the problems inherent there. Those things, the industry and the company and the product, simply are what they are. They don't detract from the romantic story attempting to be told, and that works out just fine.

"So... what do you want to do now?"

In the end, it really falls to the lead characters to make us feel like we're witnessing something different. Hathaway and Gyllenhaal make that happen in spades, and they are helped by a script that feels current, is funny as hell at times and emotionally gripping at others. Kudos to Zwick for successfully getting the best he could out this story, which could have simply taken the easy route and settled for middle of the road fare. Though it may alienate some audiences with its honest and intimate look at Parkinson's, I thought this was a beautiful film that had me constantly tearing up near the end and when the film came to a close, I wanted more, and in a good way. I never thought I'd do this, but I have to: Love & Other Drugs is my new #6 for the year. A romantic comedy that DOESN'T feature extensive video game references making it so high?

I must be maturing in my old age.

"Maybe next time we'll try in the bed."

I Don't Like Sand...

Oh, how I wish I had the Sands of Time right now. Their ability to turn back time might be beneficial so that I never have to watch this Jerry Bruckheimer-produced piece of pap, the video-game inspired Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, and spend my time that I had taken watching this film doing something vastly more productive, like mime. Lacking such mystical artifacts, however, means I can only send this warning out across the web, hoping to stop any as foolish as I from falling into this film's snares.

Kingley's knighting was not as exciting as you might think

I rented this on DVD because, frankly, there wasn't anything else interesting available at the time. While I had low expectations concerning this title anyway I thought that there was no way I could be disappointed with what I saw. Besides, I was a huge fan of the Prince of Persia series of games from which this was based. The games are amazing, pitting the player as a nameless prince who discovers a magical time-reversing dagger that he can use to fix mistakes or avoid getting flattened by the evil powers he unwittingly helps unleash over the course of the game. It also featured amazing platforming puzzles, featuring risky jumps, wall-running and pole-swinging that figured to appear prominently in the film. It's a very fun series of games, and it would have to be a much more superior film than it looked like to match up accordingly.

There's a lot of jumping... shame there wasn't more

It doesn't. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time had a lot of red flags up against it. Despite being set at the height of the Persian Empire, every major character in the film is not only white, but speaks with a noticeable British accent. It's a pseudo-violent film produced by family-friendly Disney Studios. Most damningly, it is produced by Bruckheimer, for whom even his best films have big weaknesses, and rarely survive translation to sequels if successful. Nobody doubts Bruckheimer's ability to blow stuff up, it's just that every film he does nowadays ONLY knows how to do that. Big actors like Johnny Depp can't always save his pieces from the trash heap (and Depp couldn't save the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels at all), but he does instill just enough big name prowess and a little but of humor to get by. This would explain his once-kinship with Michael Bay, as the duo knew how to get people into the theaters. Regardless, such a big film - and one based on video game, no less - is right up my alley, and it would be truly be against my nature to at least give it a look.

Dastan and Tamina get in a quick wet t-shirt contest

The film opens with a silly narrative opening, explaining to the audience exactly who the Persians where and the history of the royal family, starting off by insulting the intelligence of the audience while telling us something we didn't need to immediately know. We learn that the King of the Persian Empire (Ronald Pickup, the worst name for an actor I've ever heard) has had a strong rule, two strong sons, and a brother (Ben Kingsley) who is his closest adviser. He adopted an orphan from the streets after witnessing bravery in him of some sort (I'm a little hazy on how it was so brave, but whatever), who grew up as his third son, Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal). The kingdom is ruled under a mantle of brotherhood above all else, but that's really only a cheap plot point. The fact of the matter is, we didn't NEED all this info up front. If it had been leaked a little bit at a time to the audience over the course of the film, it would have been much more effective to the storytelling aspects of the film. Instead, we get an insulting intro.

The tension in this film is about what you can garner from this photo

After the King's first son leads an invasion of the city of Alamut, which is suspected of selling weapons to the Empire's enemies, Dastan manages to get his hands on a beautiful dagger by chance, only to later find out that this dagger was the sole reason for the invasion of the city. Soon, after being framed for his father's murder, Dastan mus go on the run with Alamut's ruler, Princess Tamina (Gemma Arterton) and try to find out who really murdered the king and to what end. It's almost laughably cliche, the plot put together for this film. Oh, a traitor, you say? Shocking! There's not a single surprising thing about this film, unless you count the fact that it for a millisecond fakes you into thinking someone else is the evil character here when everyone and their dog knows it's Ben Kingsley.

Uhm, yeah, that'll work

The film does have some good points, most notably the special effects. With some of the bigger CGI-laden scenes such as the time-traveling aspect or even one early scene with Dastan atop a pillar high above the city of Alamut, the background graphics practically scream green screen. However, the sweeping desert scenes are quite pretty, and some of the fight scenes are pretty well executed. The violence is largely bloodless, thanks to papa Disney holding the reigns. The best parts might be those decidedly low-tech, as Dastan has the natural ability, from his young life as an orphan, to climb, jump and maneuver quickly to any point to avoid capture. It's a major aspect of the games, and that the movie gives it attention at all is at least a sign that director Mike Newell was paying attention to his assistant's notes (The assistant is the one who actually played the game to give Newell all the important info he should know when he was brought in to direct, what a professional).

As a demented Jessica Rabbit clone might say: "A Maaaayn!"

The acting here is pretty bad. I won't go into the racist casting put in here, and a bulked up Gyllenhaal and the beautiful Arterton are actually not a bad pairing here, if not terribly exciting. They have good charisma together, and when they have scenes with one another, they really do have a connection between them. Gyllenhaal gets a chance to display a charm I've never seen him really put on, and Arterton has a husky voice made for these types of roles, which unfortunately doesn't mean much if she can't branch out into new character types. Most of the rest of the cast however is a mishmash of uninspired and overrated talents, many of whom have done better work elsewhere. The best of the worst is a nearly unrecognizable Alfred Molina as a desert Sheik who excels at mincing words like a used car salesman. Kingsley once again seems to have a painful disregard for the projects he signs on, as there's little in this role of the King's evil brother that needs his Oscar-winning pedigree. Steve Toussaint would have had an interesting character if it couldn't simply be boiled down to "black sidekick". Gisli Om Garoarsson is simply campy and ineffectual as the leader of a secret assassin order, called the Hassansins. I guess it's apparently taken from the real-life Hashshanshin, or Nizari Ismailis as is their true name, assassins operating at that time. Why for the film they use this similar but made up name instead of what the real name was (or why not simply "assassin"?) may not be known. Best not to dwell on it.

Being comfortable with your body is key

There wasn't really any point during this film that I was actually excited. Take away the special effects and what you're left with is a story that doesn't have too many unique elements to it (and is told poorly, to boot), plot holes you can clear in a hang glider, uninspired and uninteresting characters and the shallowest of efforts by the production team. To say I didn't like Prince of Persia would be an understatement. Perhaps the story of the game doesn't translate well to a non-interactive medium like film, but that's fine by me. I'll just pop my copy into the PS2 and enjoy myself for a spell. I've got to get Jake's pecs out of my head, after all.