‘Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time’ is yet another film adaptation of a successful video game series. The world has yet to see a good video game film, and ‘Prince of Persia’ doesn’t change the fact. Though the film is nothing special, it’s not exactly terrible as other film-adapted video games, and at times it can be entertaining.

Jake Gyllenhaal (‘Donnie Darko‘) portrays the lead, Prince Dastan, who becomes one of the three princes of Persia early on in the film when he gets adopted by King Sharaman (Ronald Pickup). Dastan is a brave and courageous individual who is exceptionally skilled in jumping around stylishly from rooftop to rooftop. This is the main selling point of the film – Parkour.

In many of the film’s interviews, the cast speak a lot of the film’s use of parkour, which is basically a complicated and athletic way of getting from one point to another. Daston is the one who takes part in the film’s many “parkour” action sequences. These parts of the film may have been somewhat interesting if it weren’t for the fact that most swashbuckling action films already have parkour-like action scenes. ‘Prince of Persia’ doesn’t have bad action scenes at least, they’re just nothing special, just mildly entertaining at best.

The plot: the princess of an ally city, Princess Tamina (Gemma Arterton), is forced to marry Daston after the Persian kingdom successfully attacks Tamina’s kingdom for allegedly selling weapons to Persian enemies. Through some mishaps, Daston discovers a dagger that can magically bring the user back in time a few minutes. Tamina is the guardian of the dagger, which contains the Sands of Time that allows for the time-travel effect.

The Sands of Time is used frequently throughout the film, which throws away the risk and suspense of the plot. Characters die and come back alive because of the Sands of Time, so when a character dies, we don’t really care that much since they’ll usually be given a second chance with the dagger.

The big reveal of the film’s true antagonist, Nizam (Ben Kingsley from ‘Shutter Island’), who is the brother of King Sharaman, is unsurprising. In fact, there’s a poster for the film that features Nizam and the word “Revenge” written in big, bold letters over his head!

All of the actors in the film were okay in the film. They weren’t bad, but again, they’re nothing special. The only exceptional performance is probably Alfred Molina (‘Spider-Man 2’) as an ostrich racer and criticizer of taxes. Molina’s character brings life and humor to the film.

Mike Newell is the director of ‘Prince of Persia’, which is probably why the film isn’t terrible like other films based off of video games. Newell is the director of ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’, which was an amazing adaptation of the Harry Potter novel, and is also one of the best two Harry Potter films yet, next to ‘Prisoner of Azkaban.’ Mike Newell has shown with ‘Prince of Persia’ that he can make an entertaining film even from a weak script.