The Prince

"The Prince" is a deceptive film. It had a well-made poster, with an intriguing title and well-known actors in its cast. It looked like it would be a solid action film. The opening credits looked very good as well and smartly conceptualized. However, they did not deliver on their promise.

Paul (Jason Patric) loses contact with his daughter Beth, who was supposedly in college. It appears she had fallen into bad company and was heavy into the drugs habit. Paul just so happened to be a former topnotch assassin with massive skills to kill. While rescuing his daughter, Paul single-handedly routs the entire drug organization, who turns out to be led by Omar (Bruce Willis), a man with the biggest score to settle with Paul.

The action sequences in this film were so basic, with nary any imagination put into them. They had little to no intensity nor excitement, since the protagonist just was conveniently too perfectly superhuman.

So if the success of this film all depended on the charisma of the protagonist, then Jason Patric simply does not have "IT". In fact, he never had it throughout his career. He was already in lead roles back in the 1990s (albeit in unfortunate films like "Speed 2: Cruise Control) but he never did catch on as a major star. Liam Neeson, Bruce Willis and even Jason Statham have done this very same story before, and all with better results than this.

John Cusack had very little to do as Sam, Paul's friend. 50 Cent was at least more interesting as a cool drug lord named "The Pharmacy." Korean superstar Rain wastes his talents as Omar's right-hand man Mark. Jessica Lowndes was just annoying as Beth's addict friend Angela. Gia Mantegna was one-note throughout her performance as drugged-out Beth.

Overall, this film is just an anemic cousin of films like "Die Hard" or "Taken" but with none of its excitement and entertainment value. Jason Patric fails yet again as the lead actor.

Kind of sad to see the talented John Cusack & Jason Patric in sub standard fare such as this. It's like a Lifetime movie for macho guys. The only good acting comes from them, then the cast tries to match their intensity - with spotty results. Overall, a decent time waster, for those John Cusack fans, like me. Still, with better writing & artistic direction, it might have looked like something more than a bad late 80's TV pilot. BTW, 50 Cent is really good for the short time he is on screen. Jonathan Scheoch, is hardly recognizable. And Bruce Willis, is Bruce Willis. The young girls were just not up to the caliber of the lead cast. It was close, but still had the overall feel of a low budget TV movie. Such a wast of Cusack's talent.

This movie is not horrible, but certainly not cinematic gold either. I'm going short for this review, because there ain't much to say.

The story is, uhm, very straight forward. But we don't really need the story to be all that, in this kind of movie.

The action is actually not bad. The shootouts are pretty good. There's real blank-firing guns, good sound design, blood-packets, the works. The action choreography is not exceptional, but alright.

Bruce Willis, who's in the front on the cover, is not in it very much. John Cusack is on the cover, but also barely in it. Pretty obvious that these actors are mostly bait, to get people to see it. If Bruce Willis is in it, can't be all bad, right!? Well, yes it can, but this is OK.

Jason Patric does a pretty good job as a bad ass, I think. Seems like he got some weapons training, he is believable or the most part.

Movie is kind of reminiscent of Taken, although a lot weaker. We don't really care much about the characters.

Take it for what it is, an action thriller with a couple of decent shoot outs, and you won't be too disappointed.

To say there isn't much to this movie is an understatement. Paper thin plot with no real surprises or even any sense. Willis, Cusak and even Patrick have certainly done better.

Patrick's character is a mere shadow of similar characters as is Willis's vengeful kingpin. Cusak's character seemed like that friend who you barely know who helps you move... he was there for a bit out of some past debt who's only function seemed to be to explain a minor plot point that even the thickest person watching would have picked up on by that point.

All in all a waste of time even on a rainy (no pun intended) afternoon.

I was really looking forward to this film. The cast is excellent and the trailer looked promising. But boy was I disappointed. Of course the expectation was high and so the movie experience even worse (I almost gave the film 3 stars).

In short why this film wasn't for me:

I didn't care about the main character / The "Lolita" girl made the film worse (and it shouldn't) / The bad guys are really stupid (like in a B movie) / The "good" guy makes ONLY stupid decisions (why? why didn't he ...)

... you get the point

When 50 Cent is one of the best characters in a movie something is really wrong.

At the time of writing the IMDb cast mentions the main actor really late - you could not guess it (by the way it's not Bruce Willis)