Tamina is only along for the ride because Dastan has unwittingly procured a mystical and powerful dagger from one of Tamina's priests who was trying to hide it from the invaders. The dagger contains the sands of time and has the ability to turn back time, if only for one minute and known only to he who activates the dagger. As Dastan and Tamina journey across the lands, he trying to discover his father's true killer and she trying to get the dagger back from him and return it to safety under her city, Dastan discovers the dagger's mighty power and realizes that the plot to siege Alumat was always about the dagger and changing the past, and the weapons' forging was all a ruse.
Their quest won't be easy as the king's actual murderer has dispatched a deadly group of royal assassins known as the Hashshashin, long thought to have been disbanded by Dastan's father. But Dastan and Tamina will get a little help along the way from Sheik Amar (Alfred Molina) and his constant companion, Seso (Steve Toussaint), a famed knife thrower. While they begin as enemies to Dastan and Tamina, even enslaving the young princess to work as a waitress in their illegal ostrich races, the group eventually bands together against those who would seek to destroy the royal Persian family. Will Dastan and Tamina be able to stop the traitor before he claims the dagger as his own and unknowingly destroys the entire world by cracking into the flow of the sands of time? Only time will tell...
While Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is not my favorite Jerry Bruckheimer film, it is still quite good and certainly has all of the hallmarks that you would expect. A beautiful cast with excellent acting chops, fantastic fight scenes and action sequences, and a really engaging story with mystical underpinnings. As for special features, you couldn't ask for more in the way of featurettes. Literally, there is something on every aspect you might want to know. The main featurette is called Sands of Time and you access it by re-watching the movie. Then, each time the dagger appears on the screen, you can hit your remote to access the Index of all of the various featurettes and it will keep track of what you have and haven't seen yet. Most are 2-3 minutes each, but there are a total of 41 covering everything from the stunt work, to the characters, to even how the video game was brought to the silver screen in the grand style of Bruckheimer. There's also a nice deleted scene, a making-of included in the DVD version which consists of snippets from the featurettes on the Blu-ray, and a digital copy as well. Fans of the game will immediately recognize nods to the game such as when Dastan perches high above the city, beholding Persia in all of its glory. He's also quite the Parkour star as he jumps from rooftop to rooftop, wall running and swinging about like a monkey. It's an integral part of the game that they wove seamlessly into the film and for fans of the game, it's much appreciated. It's oh-so-rare that a video game-to-movie adaptation works and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time definitely does. Recommended.
