Prince of Persia

Diamond In The Rough

I recently had the good fortune of being invited along for a special presentation from Disney in Manchester. Whilst there, my colleagues and I were given previews of their upcoming films such as Nick Cage vehicle "The Sorcerer's Apprentice", the first in a predicted trilogy "Tron: Legacy" and the video-game adaptation "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time".

The first looked quite entertaining, which is a big thing for a Nick Cage-hater like me to say. The second looked fantastic, and the broad outlook that Disney had for this franchise was just staggering, if slightly overwhelming. The third on the list actually looked well-presented, enjoyable and fun to watch. And I wasn't wrong in my assumptions.

The overall film was quite a spectacle. Prince centres on the rags-to-riches Prince Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal), an orphaned 'street-rat' who becomes adopted by a kind King and is treated as if his own son. Some years later, Dastan and his brothers lead a siege against a local Holy City due to the reports of them harbouring some weapon of mass destruction (veiled metaphor for something maybe?). In the rush to protect their sacred relic, a mystical dagger, it falls into Dastan's hands, as does the fate of the world. The dagger can control time by rewinding the past for a minute to right wrongs. But Dastan's evil uncle (Ben Kingsley) wants the dagger for himself, leading Dastan and the dagger's guardian (Gemma Arterton) to try and protect it from evil forces.

The director of Prince (Mike Newell) was at the presentation as well, where he spoke about how the film came to be, and the difficulties he faced when creating the film. He explained how one of the aims that he and the producers wanted to convey was their love for the Middle Eastern architecture and attention to detail that the researchers had found in buildings from that era. I cannot agree more with this statement. The level of detail in recreating the mansions, temples and royal buildings is staggering. Not only does it make you feel like you're watching events from that period, it makes you want to live there.

The set pieces of collapsing ruins under a grand city, castle sieges from opposing cities and even ostrich races are handled with a fine degree of respect and panache, as you can usually guarantee from a Jerry Bruckheimer picture. Newell made mention that Bruckheimer's strength lies in his ability to know what the cinema-going audience want, and I can't put him wrong there. Whilst Prince of Persia may not be the new Pirates of the Caribbean, I felt that Prince was a very well-crafted and well-balanced film.

The main relationship between Dastan and Princess Tamina (Arterton) was crafted very well, and it held true to the relationship between the two in the video-game. Usually the sequels to these video-games have tried to recreate the animosity between the two leads from the original, and this is the first time I've seen it work well. I felt that both Gyllenhaal and Arterton carried their performances well and were effective in their lead roles, especially as this genre is something relatively new to both of them. And well done to Jake for carrying the British accent as I thought it would put me off, as it usually does, but it suited him well.

The special effects weren't forced down our throats either. Whilst the action scenes require a fair bit of CGI to express the vastness of the sieges, the main special effects were saved for the time-travelling effects of the dagger. The dagger freezes time, and then quickly rewinds a minute, whilst the dagger's holder is left to watch as everything replays with a nice grain-of-sand and I felt this effect was used very conservatively to good effect, as it did not become stale and repetitive.

Despite the general competent performances from the actors, I felt like Ben Kingsley's villain wasn't given the opportunity to be as evil as he could be. He spends most of the film being the villain from the shadows, advising the acting king to do the wrong thing, but I felt if he was allowed to sink his teeth into the role, he could have been a more formidable villain. Plus his main weapon were the 'Hassansins', merchants of death, who I felt too closely resembled the Ringwraiths of the Lord of the Rings franchise to be original.

However these are mere annoyances that hardly affect the overall feeling of the film. Newell stated that they didn't set out to make a video-game adaptation, but use it as a basis for a whole new entertainment, and I feel it slightly covers both. There were enough high concept features to entertain the non-gamers, and yet in-jokes and appropriate parkour (free-running) action to keep the gamers pleased. I highly recommend this when the film is released in a month's time.

Rating - 7/10

Date Night

Performance Issues

You probably won't be able to find a bigger fan of Steve Carell and Tina Fey than I.  30 Rock and The Office (US) have become two of my favourite television shows of the past year and my love for Carell and Fey has only increased with time. So I was very excited to see that both of them were appearing in a film together, and had been looking forward to it for a while. And I can safely say that I was not disappointed.

The film follows the Fosters (Carell and Fey) who are stuck in a rut and decide to visit an up-scale restaurant to spice things up. Whilst there, they assume the identities of a non-showing couple who turn out to be in debt to a local gangster. This leads to a cat-and-mouse chase around New York City as the Fosters try and evade their corrupt cop captors with help from the ever-shirtless 'Markie' Mark Wahlberg.

Whilst I was expecting Michael Scott and Liz Lemon (Carell and Fey's respective sitcom characters) to be married in this film, I was glad to see both of them play new and believable roles. You end up truly wanting them to finish their date and have fun, a tribute to the acting as well as the writing, as Carell and Fey have an obvious chemistry. Although I felt that if the two were more involved in the writing or had chance to improvise, the comedy may have been a little edgier.

It was fun to see Wahlberg interact with the couple as well as cameos from Mila Kunis and James Franco, but I felt that they could have been given more screen time and opportunity to add to the comedy of the film.

Plus... Tina Fey pole-dancing in a saloon girl's outfit. Yes. A thousand times, yes.

Rating - 7/10

Pontypool

Shut Up Or Die

'Pontypool' really surprised me. I had heard the premise before watching it, but I was still amazed by the originality and slanted take on the zombie-genre.

The film takes place in a small Canadian town called Pontypool, where Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie) works as a radio DJ with his two producers Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle) and Laurel-Ann Drummond (Georgina Reilly). During the course of his radio show, Mazzy starts receiving reports from their roaming reporter of acts of violence being perpetrated by zombie-like rioters, all chanting random sentences.
As the radio show continues, Mazzy learns of an infection spreading throughout the town, but it isn't the regular zombie outbreak of people biting each other etc., the infection is in the words people are speaking and the names they call each other. This leaves Mazzy and his staff with the choice between warning the outside world, but risking infection, or do they stop speaking and live?

The premise alone allows 'Pontypool' to have the unique element of hardly showing anything happening, and yet still being incredibly threatening. The entire film is shot in one location; the basement of a church in the middle of Pontypool, and this only adds to the tension. The film gets increasingly claustrophobic as the infection slowly makes itself known and more reports are called in from their 'Eye in the Sky'. The calls describing the violence allows the viewer to make up their own scenes of violence, much worse than showing the viewer a bloody image.

I certainly favour films of this nature; limited actors and locations allow for the dialogue to take centre-stage instead of over-the-top action sequences, and that's what this film is all about. The three main actors are very believable as normal people in an abnormal situation.

The abnormal situation Mazzy finds himself in is a tad hard to understand at first, and I feel that if I wasn't aware of the case of the virus before I saw the film, I would have had a hard time understanding it. The solution as well is a little surreal but once you get your head around it, as the characters do, it's still as an enjoyable edge-of-your-seat thriller as before.

Fantastic acting, editing, storyline and especially the sound. Definitely recommend it to fans of the unconventional horror.

Rating - 9/10

The Ghost

Mr. Writer

I'm not an avid fan of Roman Polanski and his films. From his vast catalogue, I have only seen 'The Pianist' and I don't think it would be fair to compare it to 'The Ghost' as the subject matter is greatly contrasted. From seeing how Polanski could create a fantastic film such as 'The Pianist', I expected more of the same. However, I was disappointed with 'The Ghost'.

Ewan McGregor plays the title character, a ghost-writer for a former British Prime Minister, played by Pierce Brosnan. As the ghost-writer continues working for the ex-PM and learning about his past, secrets are uncovered about the ghost's predecessor and his suspicious death, as well as the PM's involvement in illegal foreign matters. What follows is quite a convoluted investigation involving the Prime Minister's wife, played by Olivia Williams, and an old acquaintance, played by Tom Wilkinson.

The basic premise has potential: a ghost-writer uncovers secrets whilst writing the memoirs for an ex-Prime Minister. However, the all-important MacGuffin: the secrets in the memoirs, are never really explained or even hinted at until right at the very end of the film, resulting in the viewer not caring whether they stay safe or fall into the 'wrong hands'. We are never really told who the ghost should be trusting, which is probably intentional but just comes off as confusing.

The Prime Minister is made out to be a bad-tempered, deceiving sex-pest and if he does get punished for his alleged crimes, the viewer is hard-pressed to find sympathy for him. Although, the opposition are made out to be just as deceiving and disloyal. This makes us wonder who can be trusted.
But again, by this point, the viewer is still left wondering why the ghost has gotten into this position in the first place, as he doesn't even know what he's protecting.

I apologise if that last part didn't make sense. This is my first attempt at an online film review and I'm finding it hard working the plot out in my head at such a late hour.

I felt as if the script-writers (Polanski and the book's author Robert Harris) tried to fit in as much of the original book as possible. This could explain why some scenes appeared lacking in depth, so to shorten the film's overall length. Quite a few scenes I felt were unnecessary and could have been cut, leaving crucial scenes with more screen-time so to explain more of the increasingly complicated storyline.

An example of this would be during an event, a note is passed from the back of a crowd to the front via several people. Instead of showing the note entering the crowd and then the recipient receiving it, Polanski shows each individual person receive and pass on the note. It begins with suspense, but as the note's journey lengthens, the importance gets overshadowed by how long the scene takes for such a simple payoff.

On a side note, I hate it when Americans, such as Kim Cattrall, are cast as Brits, and British actors, such as Tom Wilkinson, are cast as Americans. I know it's their job to be versatile, but in this case, their accents distracted from the dialogue and action.

Overall, I was left disappointed by 'The Ghost' and even though it had some hidden potential sneaking through the cracks in the plot, I probably wouldn't recommend to friends.

Rating - 4/10