I remember those days when I used to be a big fan of 'Prince', the computer game which was pretty much among the few good games that one could play on computers which used to have 386x speed processors, 2 MB RAM memory, DOS operating systems, you get the drift. Prince used to be a fun game to play with the protagonist having to climb walls, jump over open abysses, fight the guards using his sword, solve puzzles, etc. While there have been multiple games, both PC and Console versions under the Prince of Persia franchise, I never got around to playing them. However, when news was announced that a movie was being made based on this franchise, I had made up my mind to catch it given the amount of thrills and excitement the game had given me as a teenager. And the movie does not disappoint.

In the mould of the Mummy franchise (read my review of the latest Mummy movie here), this movie deals with how the protagonist has a tough mission, manages to overcome extreme odds, and finally ends up with the prize and the lovely lady at the end of the movie. All along the way, the plotline and the screenplay being extremely tight, this is one movie which will pretty much keep audiences engrossed without actually getting bored at any point of time.

The story deals with Dastan, an orphan who is adopted by the King of Persia, his foster brothers, and his foster uncle Nizam (portrayed wonderfully by Ben Kingsley). During the attack of the city of Alamut, Dastan manages to come in possession of a dagger which contains the 'sands of time'. The caretaker of the dagger, Princess Tamina manages to get back the dagger from Dastan. In the meantime, King Sharaman of Persia is killed and Dastan is implicated in the death, and is branded a murderer.

While on the run from the Persian guards and his foster brothers, Dastan and Tamina end up together where Dastan learns about the dagger, and also figures out why his uncle Nizam wants it for himself. A lot of action sequences, chase sequences, thrills and spills later, the movie ends up with the climactic sequence where Nizam is in possession of the dagger. And this to me is the part of the movie which is the most fun. How it all ends up is something that most audiences will not expect. I will not give away the ending as it will end up probably being the biggest spoiler of this entire review.

What worked for me in this movie is the tight screenplay, fun action sequences, good and appropriate use of CGI sequences, and for the most part the breezy story and plotline of the movie. All in all, a good fun movie to watch on a Sunday afternoon lazing in your couch with some popcorn or chips at your side.

Trailer



Related links

Wikipedia link to the movie
IMDB link
Allmovie link
Rotten Tomatoes link
Metacritic link
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A couple of reasons why I watched ‘Before the Rains’ were Santosh Sivan, its director and Nandita Das, its lead character. While I am a huge fan of Santosh Sivan’s cinematography in almost all of the movies in which he collaborated with Mani Ratnam (Roja, Iruvar, Dil Se, Raavanan, need I say more), the fact that I had seen quite a few interviews of his and he came across as this amazingly imaginative person who knows how to get the maximum detail in each and every frame of his piqued my interest in him. Santosh Sivan is almost like an university of cinematography and the script that he picked up for this movie lent itself to be filmed extraordinarily beautifully.

The second reason that I watched this movie was Nandita Das.
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These days Tamil cinema is in the middle of a silent revolution. While movies continue being made with big budgets, big stars (such as Singam 2, poised to release on 5th July), there is this entire other stream of movies being made with smaller budgets, smaller ‘stars’ which give much more weightage to crisp scripts, taut screenplays, and an overall appreciation to the different facets of film-making.
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I don't remember when I first heard of this movie, but for whatever reason it eluded me until Asianet finally decided to play it again (or was it the first time on TV?) on Sunday, Jan 6th. I guess the fact that this was one of the legendary Thilakan's last movies or this was one of Dulquer Salman's (Mammootty's son) first few movies played large in keeping the name 'Ustad Hotel' right on the top of my 'to watch list' of Malayalam movies.
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"Unknown" was just that, an unknown choice of a movie to watch on a Sunday afternoon. When the Missus, my cousin and me decided to sit down to watch some nice movie, the onus of choice of the movie was left to me. Browsing through my cousin's collection of movies, I happened to come across "Unknown". Not knowing anything else about the movie other than the fact that Liam Neeson starred in it, the three of us sat down to watch it.

In a departure from normal protocol, Agent Ethan Hunt is not necessarily given a choice to accept the mission in this instalment of Mission Impossible.
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At the outset "The Descendants" is a movie based on two, maybe three thin threads of stories with common characters.

The first one deals with Matt King who is the Managing Trustee of a trust which controls 25000 acres of virgin untouched land in the island of Ka'aui in Hawaii. King and his family members (read cousins, extended cousins, etc) are in the process of finalizing a deal to sell off the land and make a fortune.
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If any of the readers of this post have read the book 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' and intend to watch the movie sometime soon (albeit not in Indian theatres given that the Indian Govt has decided to ban its release in India, will soon write a separate post on that topic), request you folks to read this review with great caution as there are quite a few spoilers ahead which might end up ruining the entire movie watching experience for you.
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Now if you are a book lover and a regular reader of the thriller action genre of books there's no way that you could have missed reading "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson. This book made the literary circles and the bestseller lists of the world go ga-ga sometime ago.

The plot deals with the case of a young girl who has been missing for 30+ years and how the girl's grandfather hires an investigative journalist to trace the girl.
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You know you are in for a ride when the movie begins with a panoramic view of the Earth from the other side, the dark side of the Moon.
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While the posters of Vaanam bandied around Anushka dressed glamorously, Bharath posing with a guitar and Simbu in various poses, it gave me the impression that this was a run of the mill masala movie with the usual mass elements such as songs, dances, fights, glamour, etc etc. However, people who actually went to the theatre and watched the movie gave quite decent reviews and asked me to watch it at least once due to the fact that it was quite a different movie, in a nice way.
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