What Not To Watch: Prisoners of the Sun

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I have to believe that the producers of Prisoners of the Sun had intended for their film to follow in the action adventure footsteps of the Indiana Jones franchise or even the Stephen Sommers directed The Mummy and The Mummy Returns.

Prisoners of the Sun does share some of the characteristics of those movies I just mentioned… the archeological theme, the Egyptian setting, the connection between an advanced alien race and world history and the inclusion of John Rhys-Davies (he will always be Sallah to me).

But good intentions do not guarantee you a good movie, Prisoners of the Sun is proof of that…

• The Cast: John Rhys-Davies is the undisputed star of Prisoners of the Sun. Rhys-Davies’ Professor Hayden Masterson is a man possessed. Professor Masterson is bound and determined to unlock the mystery of a celestial event that occurs once every 5,000 years and the key to this mystery is inside a pyramid in Egypt. So he gets a team together and embarks on what could be a history altering expedition. As the leader of the expedition, the Professor Masterson character is the driving force of the movie… David Charvet of Baywatch fame plays Doug Adler. Adler is the apprentice of one of Professor Masterson’s colleagues and his character serves as the moral compass for the film. Where Professor Masterson is blinded with ambition, Adler actually cares about things like preserving history and the people involved in the expedition. I do want to point out that David Charvet does his best Casper Van Dien impersonation here (including the stubble) but I believe he is a learned expert less than I do when CVD plays characters of the same vein, but at least his character served a purpose… Carmen Chaplin plays the somewhat estranged (and bitchy) daughter of Professor Masterson. Sarah Masterson is not fond of her father, especially after her mother died ten years earlier while on an expedition in Egypt with Professor Masterson. The Sarah character meets the strong female character in an action adventure movie requirement…  Michael Higgs plays a scoundrel named Peter Levitz. Levitz blackmails Professor Masterson into including him in this historic (and potentially lucrative) expedition. The Levitz character was completely driven by greed and was perfect as the asshole you were hoping does not make it out alive… I would argue that these four characters were essential to the movie, unfortunately for Prisoners of the Sun they didn’t know when to stop…

• Character Overload: Movie goers love familiar faces (I know I do), so you would think casting Joss Ackland (Lethal Weapon 2) would be a positive for the movie. But Ackland’s character is the most high profile example of a useless character in the movie. Ackland’s Professor Mendella is the mentor to Doug Adler, but the character has a heart attack and has to pull out of the expedition with Professor Masterson so he sends Adler in his stead. This backstory of Adler being a last minute fill in and one who has his credentials questioned by the others could have been accomplished in a few lines of dialogue, instead of multiple scenes with a character who is basically written out of the movie (only to show up needlessly at the very end after the expedition is all over)… Then there is Claire The Psychic (Emily Holmes). In a movie that already wants me to believe that space aliens helped create the pyramids, they want me to further suspend my disbelief by throwing a psychic character in the mix. If she was the only female character in the film it would make sense as you need something to prevent a 100% sausage fest, but why not just give the Sarah character psychic abilities?!… But the character I am still most confused by was Adam Prime (Nick Moran). I seriously have no idea what his character was supposed to be. At one point he is referred to as an ass kisser, I assumed the ass he was kissing was that of Professor Hayden Masterson, which is why he was part of the expedition but it kind of feels like Nick Moran was kissing the ass of the producers to give him a part in the film!? The Adam character served absolutely no purpose at all. Considering the movie only had a short 85 minute runtime, there was really no need for the number of characters that Prisoners of the Sun had.

• The Pace: Now you would think with only 85 minutes to work with Prisoners of the Sun would move at an entertaining clip but unfortunately that was not the case. Prisoners of the Sun should have been a rollercoaster ride, but instead I found myself waiting for something of interest to happen and fighting the urge not to fall asleep. It took way too long for the actual expedition to begin and this is due to all the characters they had to introduce first. The movie was not devoid of excitement, but there was no momentum. For example, they killed off some of the Egyptian soldiers who were accompanying the expedition in entertaining booby trap fashion. But instead of mashing the gas and making me wonder who is next?, they would slam on the brakes and have me checking how much more of the movie there was to sit through. I felt like I was a prisoner of Prisoners of the Sun.

Prisoners of the Sun is not the worst movie I have ever seen (a list of movies worse than this one is available upon request), but I would not recommend it to anyone. The premise behind the film was not bad, but the execution certainly was. I am not sure if Prisoners of the Sun was an idea that was not fully fleshed out and perfected OR if it was a great story that had to be altered due to a low budget but no matter the reason behind it the movie was certainly lacking.

One thing this review does not lack is some Bonus Bullet Points…

• One Question: Why does IMDb use the above picture as the Prisoners of the Sun default pic? Had I seen that picture when I was scrolling through Amazon Prime I would have skipped right by thinking it was some sort of Lifetime drama about people battling melanoma.
• Red Flag #1: The movie was shot in 2006/2007 but not released anywhere in the world until December 2013.
• Special Effects: One thing I won’t take Prisoners of the Sun to task for are the movie’s special effects. Given the budget they were working with, I thought visually the movie looked good from the pyramid itself, to the lasers and the mummies coming alive.
• Worst Slap Ever?: I’m not condoning violence against women, but when Professor Masterson slaps his daughter, it was one of the weakest slaps I have ever seen. You need to lay that shit in and John Rhys-Davies did not.
• Red Flag #2: Uwe Boll was a co-producer on the film.
• Pigeon Holed: At this point in his career, John Rhys-Davies has been in more Indiana Jones inspired films than he has Indiana Jones movies. Along with Prisoners of the Sun, John Rhys-Davies was in King Solomon’s Mines, Firewalker and Secret of the Andes.