Jake Gyllenhaal and Gemma Arterton

Like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of movies based on video games. "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time," which is moderately entertaining chaos, dates to the Reagan administration (game creator Jordan Mechner gets executive-producer and story credit).

What little story there is, however, goes out of its way to reference more recent political events.

In the opening, the Persians invade a holy city to seize weapons of mass destruction (fancy swords, mostly) on false pretenses and bad intel. And the movie's most engaging character, played by a blessedly exuberant Alfred Molina, is an ostrich race promoter (!) who spews anti-government and tax rhetoric straight out of a tea party rally.

Molina saves the film from itself. A Disney/Jerry Bruckheimer co-production, "Prince of Persia" combines the mythic bombast of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" outings with the peppy brainlessness of the "National Treasure" films. Working with a credible lower-class-British dialect, that great Persian actor Jake Gyllenhaal stars as the grown-up street urchin adopted by the king. Ben Kingsley is his uncle figure and protector (or is he?). Gemma Arterton, straight from a barrage of second-rate computer-generated visual effects in "Clash of the Titans," plays a young royal trying to keep a magical dagger out of enemy hands.

What can the dagger do? It can turn back time and, in the wrong hands, unleash Armageddon. This is what you, the video gamer, are trying to prevent from happening. Oh, wait. This is the movie version. The viewer has no control over events.

The script races from set piece to set piece, in the gaming spirit, with dialogue on the order of: "OK, there are two gates." Or: "They've broken through to the first level of the tunnels!" Director Mike Newell, who fared well with the fourth " Harry Potter" film, is working a little lower down the fantasy chain here, and it'd be wrong to suggest that "Prince of Persia" offers anything like true magic. He keeps the camera rammed close to the action and to the actors' faces, and the battles have been diced into bits by no fewer than three editors. Plus, this may be the most orange movie ever made: Working in Morocco and on London soundstages, cinematographer John Seale's chief inspiration appears to be the heat lamps at Arby's.

And yet ... it's sort of fun, certainly more so than the "National Treasure" pictures, as well as less manic (a little less) than the recent "Mummy" films. Mainly, for folks like me, it has Molina. His character's zest may be in a broader vein than Peter Ustinov's peerless turn in "Spartacus." But Molina's wit enlivens a product you might otherwise forget as it slips in one eye and out the other.

 

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"Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time" Movie Trailer

 

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MPAA rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of violence and action).

Running time: 1:55.

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal (Dastan); Gemma Arterton (Tamina); Ben Kingsley (Nizam); Alfred Molina (Sheikh Amar).

Credits: Directed by Mike Newell; written by Boaz Yakin, Doug Miro and Carlo Bernard; based on the video game created by Jordan Mechner; produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. A Walt Disney Pictures release.