Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Prince of Persia - sands of time

Imagine a brave young boy, who dares to face the soldiers to rescue his friend. That would be our hero in making, Dastaans gains the kings favor and becomes one of the Princes of Persia. His courage and strength gains him the title 'Lion of Persia' in the seige against the Holy city of Alamut. The city of Alamut has a secret that is closely guarded by its princess, Tamina. No prizes for guessing what it is...
Dastaan get hold of 'a' dagger which is 'the' dagger the princess sent away with one of her guards. Tus is Dastaan's half brother and the heir to the throne wishes to marry Tamina princess of Alamut and to have the city as his ally, though Tamina refuses at first, she accepts the proposal after seeing the dagger with Dastaan. But the King is not happy with his son Tus for raiding the holy city, and he offers Dastaan to marry the princess. At that very moment the King burns because of he effect of the poisoned cloack which Tus gave Dastaan to offer to the King. Well the princess helps Dastaan escape... Yeah there is a surprice.
Well the princess has her own agenda - to kill Dastaan and get back the dagger but during her attemt to kill him Dastaan accidentally finds out the true nature of the dagger and has an out of body experience. He thinks Tus was after the dagger all along and had framed him, so he plans to show the dagger and its powers to Nizam, the brother of the deceased king. Tamina explains that - any sand - won't do, only special sand in the catacombs of Alamut can be used to turn back time. They head back to Persia but have a run in with the merchant-bandits who conduct ostrich races to make more money. After escaping from them the prince and princess reach Persia in time for the funeral of the king and here Dastaan finds out that it was Nizam who was to blame for all his problems. (yeah! i knew that when the king died- Tus was not on the poster but Nizam was)

Anyway since Tamina escapes with the dagger Dastaan once again starts to find her this time he wants to get rid of it. Nizam sends the hassasins after them. Once again Dastaan and Tamina finds themselves imprisoned by the bandits, this time Dastaan saves them from the vipers and makes friends of his captors. They try to destroy the dagger by putting it from the place it was made but the hassasins take it anyway. Next is the sand for the dagger, as Nizam and his men, tunnel through the catacombs Dastaan and Tamina try to get the dagger back. The action sequence follows where Prince of Persia, jumps a lot of impossible jumps and finally finds Nizam piercing the crystal that holds the sands of time. He let Tamina fall into the depths to save the world from destruction (pretty heroic don't you think). He travels back in time, to the seige of Alamut and exposes Nizam as a fraud. Tus apologises to Tamina and proposes that Dastaan marry Tamina. Dastaan presents Tamina with the dagger as a wedding gift. She find his lack of interest curious and the sun sets in Persia (and no one ever knows what Dastaan went through after all the heroics).

All-in-all an OK movie. Nothing in the story that you cannot predict. The stunts were totally unreal. I hoped that during the seige of Alamut Dastaan faces some unexpected situations so that we know that Tamina has used the dagger to save her kingdom but failed. Why she would not use such a useful weapon to save her own kingdom is a weakness in the story. Watch this movie with friends for a nice time, but it no Pirates of the Carribian.

I give it a 5/10

No comments: