Smell the Movies
Smell the TV
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
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| Year: | 2010 |
| Country of origin: | USA |
| Director: | Mike Newell |
| Genre: | Vidoe game horribleness |
| Starring: | Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton, Ben Kingsley |
| Rating: | 2/5 |
| IMDB link: | http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0473075/ |
| Tagline: | Defy the Future |
| Favourite line: | None worth mentioning |
Movies based on video games, they're a bit rubbish, aren't they?
Street Fighter, Mario Bros, Doom, House of the Dead.
The list goes on.
But wait.
What's that?
A movie based on a video game rated 6.9 on IMDB?
Surely not?
That means it must be good, or at least not terrible, was my thought as I ventured into the multiplex in tandem with the good woman, who had expressed concerns on the way that it wouldn't be any good at all. Pish and posh, I said, take that 6.9 on IMDB and stick it right were the beans don't jump.
So, who was right?
Well, it is certainly the best video game tie-in movie set in ancient Persia about a magical dagger I have ever seen....
Here's the skinny, kids: I love the games this is based on. My first exposure was way back when on the Atari ST, as the Prince jumped from platform to platform shimmied along ledges and generally acted like a nauseatingly athletic son of a whore and I've kept with him, at least up to his PS2 incarnations. Add to that the fact I have a tendency to forgive Jake Gyllenhaal most things just for being Donnie Darko.
But the movie is freakin' awful.
It starts off promisingly enough, with some hokum about Gyllenhaal's pauper boy Dastan being saved from poverty by the king. Skip forward to adulthood, and Dastan is charging into battle, slipping into a castle unnoticed to open a rear gate to allow easy access for the rest of the legion.
So far, so medieval, but all too soon the tedium kicks in.
Dastan is betrothed to be married to the beautiful Princess of the defeated city, Tamina, shortly before his father is murdered by a poisoned coat (!), Dastan believed to be the culprit so, with Tamina on his arm they flee, though theirs is not to be a peaceable relationship as she schemes to get her hands on The Dagger that allows time to be set in reverse, then it seems one of his brothers may be behind the murder before the true revelation follows that someone else is the bad guy and they survive a sand storm and they ride a lot on horses and even then on ostrich's and get involved in a punch up with a merchant in the Valley of Slaves and....sweet Jesus, my mind is about to melt.
Seriously, they throw so much at you, both in terms of plot and on screen mayhem that, eventually, you just start to shut it all out, like white noise on a TV screen when you've lost the remote control, your brain blocking the chaos as best it can lest you go blind through madness.
Poorly paced, with no sense of crescendo, instead scenes just follow on from each other, the fight sequences towards the end of the movie no more violent or perilous than those at the beginning and with some of the dodgiest CGI I've seen in a while, this is shallow, vapid and spiritually crippling.
But heh, I knew all that as it's based on a game, what I did not expect was to be bored to miserable tears.
Don't bother.
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