The Movie
So it's to be another movie based on a videogame. At least this one eschews all of the obnoxious high tech and is instead a lavish, big-budget spectacle set in the glory days of a bygone empire. Brave, good-hearted Dartan is an adopted Prince of Persia who, as a young street urchin, invented the now-popular free-running sport Parkour, to help him look cool while stealing. He has since grown into a man (Jake Gyllenhaal) with a ridiculous non-haircut despite his vast riches, which might be an underlying factor in his now being framed for the murder of his father, the king.
Like most accused killers, he must bring a mystical dagger to his uncle in order to prove his innocence, a journey which requires him to jump quite a lot. The knife handle is filled with The Sands of Time, giving its bearer the ability to reverse time. But only for a minute. And only until the tiny amount of sand runs out. And if anyone tries to muck with the vast, hidden supply of magic dirt, mankind will be destroyed. Unless, of course, it isn't. The rules of the gods sound a lot like something we'd read in the booklet accompanying an Xbox 360 disc, and the movie keeps throwing new ones at us then breaking them to keep us on our toes. Anything to distract us from all those overdone, posturing accents.
Level up to Joe Lozito's review of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time while you're at it.
The Picture
The extensive computer-generated visual effects are at once ambitious--entire cities recreated from a variety of angles--and evident, here in HD as they likely were on the big screen. The 2.4:1 image is noisy in the frequent shadows, and I noted instances of unpleasant video streaking in some shots. Even the sands in the sprawling desert vistas tend to look a little... grainy. I was surprised at the lackluster video quality for a movie that probably cost more to produce than the U.S. spent to invade Iraq.
The Sound
The accompanying DTS-HD Master Audio track is a different matter, however. The big battles are resplendent in 5.1, graced with ample bass to reinforce the more significant action beats as well as the dynamic phasing of whizzing arrows in just about every direction. Surrounds are aggressive throughout, full of odd sounds and all manner of crowds, plus a sonically exceptional scene involving a master of the whip. (Indiana Jones, the gauntlet has been thrown!)
The Extras
The Blu-ray serves up a largely inconsequential minute-and-a-half cut scene, but it's the "Sands of Time" CineExplore viewing mode that rightly intrigued me. Following a video introduction, an interactive dagger icon appears on the screen from time to time to link us to pertinent behind-the-scenes featurettes. There are 20 such "Rewind" points, each with up to three vignettes, a couple of minutes each, indexed so we can keep track of what we've already seen. It's all in HD and the transitions from and back to the movie are usually seamless. This platter also supports Disney BD-Live.
Disc Two is a standard-definition DVD of the movie with a more traditional 16-minute documentary, "An Unseen World: Making Prince of Persia" which repurposes some of that same CineExplore footage. Disc Three carries a digital copy for either iTunes or Windows Media.
Final Thoughts
Unless you're a fan of costume epics, or homages to everything from Terminator to Raiders of the Lost Ark to Lion King, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time might not be for you. Then again, if you want to check out some nifty showoff audio, one of the more elaborate Blu-ray-exclusive bonuses, or just Jake's buff bod, a rental might make you prince for a day.
Product Details
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