Jake Gyllenhaal: Prince of Wales

I didn’t know Jake Gyllenhaal was British. He must be though, because putting on a Cockney accent to play a Persian is to normal stupidity as a claymore is to a can opener. Ok – fair’s fair – all the other actors were British, so it made sense for Jake to put on the accent so he wouldn’t stand out. He even did a decent job of it. Credit must be given for the talent, but here endeth the bravos.

I remember Prince of Persia being a side-scrolling PC platformer that I hated because I could never time my jumps correctly and fell to my death on a bed of spikes every fucking time. Years later, the series of console games that bear little resemblance to the original are supposedly very good, but I haven’t played any of them because I still hold a grudge against those stupid mistimed jumps and spikey deaths. And that’s just what the film is like: a leap of faith out into the abyss, followed by a long drop, and then a painful finale by impaling. For a response to complaints about how I can’t possibly understand necessary details of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time without playing the games, please refer to my Twilight: New Moon review.

The problem is the script. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was written on butcher paper with a box of crayolas. The characters are flimsy and the dialogue is choc-full of thick monologues and clumsy theme references, when it’s not plainly expository. It took three screenwriters and they still didn’t avoid the rookie pitfall of having their characters talk the entire plot. For example, we see Danstan use the dagger to turn back time. He does it four times in quick succession, but still feels the need to say “The dagger turns back time” to a character who already knows what it does. In a later scene, he says “I’m going to my father’s funeral.” Great, but we can see that when you get there. The screenwriters don’t seem to understand that a film has moving pictures. Maybe they thought they were writing a radio play.

Without delving too deep into Persian history, the etymological origin of the word assassin supposedly comes from Hashshashin, the name given to the Nazari Shia Muslims after they split from the Fatid Empire. Alternate spellings include Hashishin, Hashashiyyin or Hashasheen, none of which were good enough for the screenwriters, who settled on the name Hassansin. I imagine the conversation running something like this:

Doug Miro: Throw another n in there.

Boaz Yakin: Fuck off Miro; you and your extra n.

Carlo Bernard: I think an extra n sounds good.

Doug Miro: Suck it, Yakin. Two against one.

Boaz Yakin: This is bullshit.

Carlo Bernard: Have either of you guys seen my red crayon?

I’m liking this dialogue so much I’m thinking of adapting it into a screenplay.

At this point in the review I would normally give a run-through of the plot, but as far as I could tell, there wasn’t one. Instead, I’ve developed a helpful Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time DON’Ts list, of pitfalls to avoid when making your own film.

DON’T have assassins use explosives. It’s not subtle, which is kind of what assassination is all about.

DON’T immediately follow on-screen text with voice-over narration. It’s like giving someone a book and then saying “you know what? I’ll just read it to you.”

DON’T have a main character who runs, climbs, leaps and swings from ropes more than a pirate trapeze artist. He can walk sometimes.

DON’T hire set designers who build castle interiors that look like they were left over from a school play.

DON’T hire an actor like Ben Kingsley and then put so much eyeliner on him that he looks like a bald Liza Minnelli, which makes it very unsurprising when he winds up being the bad guy.

DON’T write a scene about a character being poisoned if you don’t know how poison works. It doesn’t burn people to death.

DON’T have the only black guy in the movie be an indentured servant. It’s not very PC. Also, DON’T kill him at the end. It’s clichéd. Oh, and DON’T let your costume department give him a head full of thumb tacks. It’s stupid.

DON’T shovel in overbearing amounts of exposition halfway through the film. It’s not coal in a steam engine, and it won’t replace plot.

Here endeth the lesson.

From Paris with Love

As you may have noticed (you clever-clogs, you), I normally opt for a silly title that’s somehow loosely related to the film I’m reviewing, but in this case it’s completely unnecessary. From Paris with Love isn’t so much a bad title as it is exceptionally generic - almost any film that features La Ville-Lumière could be called From Paris with Love. As I had to explain to every person who asked me what film I was seeing that day, it’s not a bad rom-com – it’s a worse action movie.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers, aka Mr Roboto, whirs and clunks his way along, playing boring-as-a-biscuit James Reece; aide to a U.S. ambassador in France. He’s also a low-level spook for some inexplicable reason, whose dream of dreams is to play with the grown-up spies. Meyers puts on a very mediocre American accent for the part, but the guy is Irish so we’ll cut him some slack. No slack shall be cut for Travolta however, who has enough experience to know that if a character didn’t work for The Taking of Pelham 123, the same character with a different name (Charlie Wax – hahaha…. bahahahahaha…) won’t work the second time around either. Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. It’s also the definition of stupidity.

From Paris with Love is a film flawed from the get-go. The opening is an uninteresting driving scene that has nothing to do with the film. The set-up is weak, leaving the viewer with no interest in the hero or his journey. Technically this hero is Reece, but he’s inactive and just follows Wax; a rookie filmmaking mistake. The act break is sloppy, and then we immediately jump to a random shoot-out in a Chinese restaurant that leads to a series of random shoot-outs, each one more derivative and uninspired than the last. For a couple of spies, Reece and Wax do very little intel/recon work. Fortunately for them, the location of the next shooting gallery falls magically from the sky time and again, they wander in, Wax empties a clip of bullets into every living thing, and they go skipping off to the next place. Someone (presumably the screenwriter) has tried to thicken the plot by adding a couple of turns, but it comes out like packet gravy; thin with lumpy bits, and ultimately unappetising. Such lumpy examples are: ‘Actually, we’re not chasing drug-dealers. We’re chasing terrorists!’ and: ‘Hey Reece, your girlfriend is one of those terrorists!’

Both the dramatic tension and the comedic relief are supposed to come from the odd-couple relationship between the methodical, straight-as-a-Baptist-preacher Reece and the wacky, loose-cannon Wax. Obviously it doesn't work because I used the phrase ‘supposed to’ and I’ve already mentioned that this movie is bad. There’s practically no screen time devoted to setting up the character of Reece and literally none for Wax; we meet him when Reece does, half-way through verbally abusing a French customs officer. (As a side note, French customs officers are no joke. I’ve seen them give a guy a proper kicking for yelling at an airline attendant.) Reece and Wax aren’t characters; they’re cut outs – flimsy ones that have been left out in the rain overnight. I’d prefer to believe that it was an issue of casting, and make no mistake, the acting was all sorts of bad, but I have an inkling there was a slight oversight in letting a complete unknown write the screenplay. And what the fuck has happened to Luc Besson? He made Leon and Nikita, both absolute genius films, so why would he hand his story over to a pleb and request that he make it into a screenplay? Besson must have done something really bad, like run over Sarkozy’s dog, and his punishment is this strange brand of public humiliation.

In the end Reece gives his terrorist fiancé a lovely engagement gift – a new hole in the head, courtesy of his 9mm. She gives him a ring that belonged to her father and he reciprocates by shooting her through the frontal lobe. It seems uncalled for. Then again, the ring did have a tracking device in it, and it’s very likely the fiancé was lying about it belonging to her dad in the first place. The scene that follows the fiancé head-shoot is my absolute favourite, not only because it’s the last scene of the film, but because it’s hilarious, albeit unintentionally. Wax hands Reece a paper bag containing ‘something to remember her by.’ It’s a strip of passport-sized photos showing an intimate moment between Reece and his fiancé… the one he just murdered.

I’d like to end on a positive note by saying that there was one thing I liked about From Paris with Love. As someone who's lived in Paris, I really appreciated some of the little touches of authenticity. The only problem was that they were limited to an apartment building exactly like the one I used to live in, an alleyway and a Chinese restaurant. Oh, and the suburbs. Big up the 93!