Persian pleasure

If a theme park ride can be made into an exceptionally successful, if overblown, franchise, then there should be no pooh-poohing that another computer game makes the transfer from home viewing interactivity to cinematic non-interactivity. Prince of Persia is one of the best of the latter kind of conversions and, like Pirates of the Caribbean derived from the former, PoP has a natty subtitle in The Sands of Time.
The film opens with an anachronistic ye olde map, giving the general gist that this is the time of the Achaemenid Persian Empire in its pomp, though the scriptwriters plunder every period of the region from the ancient to the Middle Ages for inspiration as if they themselves possessed the time-shifting dagger.
Jake Gyllenhaal’s comedy English accent is actually pretty much spot-on but it’s amusing to see it come from his mouth. Indeed, everyone in this film treats Received Pronunciation as their mother tongue, so cut-glass it could split a diamond, as is the usual Hollywood treatment of foreign historical fodder. It’s not just the portrayed royalty that have a command of the Queen’s English.
With everyone tonally alike, it is harder to identify who the villain will be, though from an early stage I had my suspicions given familiar tropes in Middle Eastern storytelling such as in 1001 Arabian Nights. Hashanins i.e Hashashins i.e. Assassins make an appearance and the members of this sect are well at home with their ugliness an indication of their villainy, so at least something of the politically incorrect, average blockbuster survives (this is made by Disney, after all). Oh and they also wear black as well, travelling like ring-wraiths from Lord of the Rings. They are defeated not as historically by the advancing Mongol horde (who the Persian cavalry here closely resemble) but by dextrous pressing of joypad buttons, sorry, incredible, death-defying, physics-defying acrobatics with a dash of their plans ensnared by hubris.
Religion is frequently mentioned, but is never clear if the Persians are Zoroastrians or Muslims (I said it was anachronistic), perhaps being tactfully bland other than that prayer is often discussed when the violence abates. Other comparisons with modern-day USA is Alfred Molina’s wheeler-dealer bandit decrying the payment of taxes. I digress. The religion on show here owes more to Indiana Jones ‘let’s have fun with mysterious creeds and legends’ than being theologically accurate.
Joining Gyllenhaal and Molina is Sir Ben Kingsley, who has already had practice at playing a Persian, in the flick The House of Sand and Glass set in the present. Steve Toussaint puts in more than token performance as Nubian knife-thrower who seems to be more well-travelled than Ibn Battuta, given that he also strikes fear in Numidia as well as throughout the Middle East. Gemma Arterton gives a fine performance, neither warrior princess, nor damsel in distress, as a proto Vestal Virgin.
Altaa gave her imprimatur of the movie as being something new, something different. The rollicking action is fairly coherent in that you can understand who slashes at who and the coda was a fresh twist to much fare that populates the multiplexes. An accomplished production.