Persian Popcorn

I had low expectations for "The Prince of Persia". After all it's Bruckheimer. You know what you're going to get with Bruckheimer. Plus this hasn't been the best summer season so far. "Iron Man 2" was a minor disappointment. "Robin Hood" was a major disappointment. But this is the time for popcorn-chompers so if there's some fun action and it isn't completely silly you're ahead of the game. "The Prince of Persia", I'm happy to say, may not be ahead of the curve but at least it breaks even.
Jake Gyllenhaal takes a stab at the action hero thing and comports himself admirably. Listen, if Toby McGuire can be an action hero, who's to judge. There is a dagger that turns back time and life as we know it is at stake...blah, blah, blah. Plot is peripheral in films based on video games. The strength of this summer movie is in the characters. The director is Mike Newell, a veteran of both small indie films and even a Harry Potter (#4). He allows his characters to talk to each other, to actually relate to each other. They can be sexy and angry and even funny. The smartest thing he did is cast Alfred Molina as a conniving, ostrich-racing con artist. The setting for this extravaganza is the desert and the production design takes advantage of the exotic, if somewhat comic-booky locals. All of that is pretty fun stuff.
Here's the problem. Bruckheimer lives off silly action sequences like a vampire lives off AB negative. Seventeen flips off a rooftop and nobody breaks a bone, except maybe the editors who may have broken their wrists from all that rapid-fire cutting. It's silly and degrades what might have been a good summer flick. It's simple. Bruckheimer thinks he makes great action movies but in fact he ruins them. It's sad.
Still Mike Newell does what he can before the video game geeks take over the editing room. He saves it just enough to call it even. The summer season may be in intensive care, but with "The Prince of Persia", it still has a pulse.