Day 19 -- Prince of Persia

Released: May 28th, 2010

Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton, Ben Kingsley

Writer/Director: Boaz Yakin, Doug Miro and Carlo Bernard/Mike Newell

Description: A young fugitive prince and princess must stop a villain who unknowingly threatens to destroy the world with a special dagger that enables the magic sand inside to reverse time.

[Review may contain spoilers. Please watch movie before reading, unless you don't care. Most of these films have already been released for a while, so they should be readily available.]

***

Most of the desert action-adventure period piece movie have started to blend together. "The Mummy" is a fantastic movie, but after that was "Mummy 2", "Scorpion King", and the meh, "Mummy 3". Even "Aladdian", despite being an animated movie followed the same sort of formula.

In Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time -- was the colon plus subtitle needed -- Jake Gyllenhaal plays Dastan, who was a peasant orphan that was adopted by the King of Persia. After a great victory, he is framed for the death of his father, and becomes a fugitive. Unbeknownst to him, he acquired the Sands of Time dagger, which can turn back time and only the holder of the dagger knows this has occurred.

The rest of the story is very shakespeareian in nature. The king's brother is the real assissian, and wants to use the dagger to go back to the moment he saved his brother from death as a child so that he can become king. It's a slight retelling of "Hamlet", and Kingsley even gives off a Scar from "The Lion King" vibe. Also, there's a character that resembles Jafar from "Aladdin" just in case you didn't know this movie was made by Disney.

Despite the Disney backing, this movie is honestly not bad. It's your standard sword-fighting action adventure, and Gyllenhaal doesn't look out of place. The only thing that bothered me was his accent because there were times -- probably near the beginning of filming -- where the accent sounds forced and rushed. I know the accent is needed because of the setting, but I would have rather had another British actor play the role.

Speaking of British actors, Gemma Arterton, had her Kelly Hu/Rachel Weisz breakout moment. Arterton is familiar to those that suffered through "Quantum of Solace", as Strawberry Fields. She is one in a recent wave of young British actresses including Emily Blunt and Carey Mulligan, who have come along in the past few years that are both beautiful and well-trained. I would keep an eye on her in the future.

This movie is the kind of stupid fun that movies like "The Mummy", "National Treasure" and "Transformers" have always made people pay to see in theaters. Everything is pretty solid, even though the writing does tend to dumb down some scenes, but that's to be expected with Disney. A very polished movies from start to finish that never had a moment where I regretted watching it.

Rating: 7/10 -- Fun action movie with Gyllenhaal for the girls, Arterton for the guys, and Sir Ben Kingsley for both. Great family flick that your kid will love, and you won't hate.