Prince of Persia-Sands of Time (2010)

"This is what a videogame movie looks like now.  Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly
"It deserves to be seen on a hot Saturday afternoon in a theater (preferably an air-conditioned one) peopled with other people, the way many of us used to see movies as kids.  Stephanie Zacharek, Movieline

Editor's Note In this video game adaptation, Jake Gyllenhaal stars as a prince who must keep a powerful, mythical object called the Sands of Time out of the hands of villains. To do this, he needs the help of a strong-willed princess (Bond girl Gemma Arterton). PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME is directed by Mike Newell (HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE) and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer.

	Gemma Arterton
	Jake Gyllenhaal
	Ben Kingsley
	Jerry Bruckheimer - Producer
	Mike Newell - Director

Box Office
3 stars out of 5 -- "PRINCE OF PERSIA is a rip-roaring great time at the movies....Mixing old fashioned content and state of the art effects..." 05/11/2010

Hollywood Reporter
"[H]andsome, fast-paced....The film has dash and flourish..." 05/10/2010

USA Today
"[T]his faux epic does offer family-friendly entertainment....The swashbuckling premise recalls ALADDIN, ARABIAN NIGHTS and the Indiana Jones movies..." 05/28/2010

Wall Street Journal
"[Gyllenhaal's] dashing Dastan drives this action adventure, which was directed by Mike Newell, with a sense of fun...and a winning demeanor that encompasses light irony and poetic melancholy..." 05/28/2010

Movieline
"PRINCE OF PERSIA acknowledges its absurdity and runs with it, turning a possible liability into a crazy brand of Saturday-matinee majesty." 05/27/2010

Total Film
3 stars out of 5 -- "[A] Middle Eastern adventure with a dashing hero, a plucky heroine and a supporting cast of familiar faces led by the ever reliable Ben Kingsley." 05/10/2010

Entertainment Weekly
"[The film] unfolds at a brisk, well-paced clip." -- Grade: B 06/04/2010

Rolling Stone
"The retro appeal of the movie is undeniable, recalling THE ARABIAN NIGHTS splendor of 1940's THE THIEF OF BAGDAD." 06/10/2010

The Charlotte Observer 7 of 10
If you're going to swipe from "Star Wars," which itself borrowed from legends and stories going back to the Old Testament, you'd better do it with verve. Prince of Persia sweeps across the screen with uncomplicated panache, mild claims to epic status and stock but enjoyable personalities. It's probably too much to demand surprises in the story or characterizations of a rollicking summer blockbuster. And on the scale of summer action films, this is to the Transformers sequel what an Andy Warhol print is to a first-grader's refrigerator painting...I haven't played the video games on which the movie is based. The savvy gamer who went to the preview with me says the film borrows from all four Prince of Persia avatars, concentrating on the earliest and latest: The plot about a dagger that can reverse time is in the first; the wisecracking monarchs who team up come from the fourth...There are a few nominal surprises, but the writers don't really expect you to be surprised. We don't find out for a while that Kingsley's wicked uncle is affiliated with a banned tribe of killers called the Hassansins ? they do political hassansinations ? but it's hard not to suspect a character with a shaved head, pointy goatee, thick eye shadow and a habit of lurking in corners and muttering...Nor does the plot make sense, even in fantasy terms. We're told that chaos and the destruction of humanity will result if anyone sticks the dagger into a magic hourglass that controls the flow of time, except that ? it doesn't. (That whole turning back time thing always makes any plot seem inconsequential: No matter what terrible things happen, you can "fix" them by just starting over.)...Yet the outcome is not the point here; the journey is. We've come to the theater to enjoy the cinematography of John Seale, who won an Oscar with desert locales in The English Patient, or the parkour-inspired fighting style of the prince, who can use anything as a stepping-stone: crossbow arrows stuck in a wall, the backs of camels, even the body parts of his foes. On those kinds of counts, Persia delivers what we'd want on a lazy summer's day. - Lawrence Toppman