BOTTOM LINE: Surprisingly entertaining popcorn flick with some fun action, humour and mystery, only let down by some lapses in to predictable cliché and an emphasis on noise over story.

THE GOOD: On paper, this film seemed like another disposable Jerry Bruckheimer adventure production but in the capable hands of Mike Newell, “Prince of Persia: The Sands Of Time” is surprisingly entertaining, making use of its history through the video games quite well (which is no doubt a result of game creator Jordan Mechner’s involvement in the writing duties). Jake Gyllenhaal plays Prince Dastan, a street boy adopted by the King of Persia as one of his own sons. When he perpetrates a successful raid on a holy city, not all is at it seems, and as he digs deeper, he suddenly becomes thrusts in to a plot which sees the King murdered, and himself a fugitive on the run. In essence, this story follows this basic plot structure of the various iterations of the video games, and as a result, we get to see a lot of action scenes of the Prince running, jumping and performing acrobatic stunts across roof tops and fighting bad guys. There is a decent enough story to follow as well with “The Sands Of Time” having the power to turn history backwards for whoever activates the dagger containing the sand, thus giving its bearer the ability to change history and the world. The cast performs very well, with Jake Gyllenhaal being the ultimate surprise as he manages to carry the titular role quite successfully. Gemma Arterton matches Gyllenhaal with her feisty yet feminine performance as Princess Tamina. Ben Kingsley seems destined to be the bad guy by default and does an amicable job, while Alfred Molina brings some good humour to the piece as a pirate. “Prince of Persia: The Sands Of Time” is a beautifully shot, and entertaining piece of popcorn which is worth parking your brain at the door for a few hours for.

THE BAD: The problem with films like this is that the inevitable clichés come out. Mike Newell manages to keep them at bay for the most part, but they are still present, largely because this is still at its core a mass-produced piece of entertainment. The romance angle for example is clumsily set up and just there for effect and the female audience; the characters are quite two dimensional as written, and it is only the cast that really makes them worth watching. Another problem is the way this film is edited; the emphasis is too much on moving on to the next action scene and creating as much noise as possible. If the filmmakers had taken the time to install a sense of rhythm, and even a few moments of quiet, this film would have been more dramatic and become a proper film rather than as the previously mentioned mass-produced piece of entertainment. The elements were there to make this film more than what it ultimately is, but perhaps Jerry Bruckheimer does not care as at the end of the day, this film has been designed, and will no likely doubt, appeal to the young male audience who will go and see it again and again.