The Prince

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.

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.

I saw John Cusak, so I figured it would be worth a shot since he hits a winner about 75% of the time. Well--this was one of the 25%, but it was still an entertaining shoot-em-up sort of film. Bruce Willis must have needed the dough because his character could have been played by anybody; he didn't bring any "Bruce Willis" to it. 50-Cent was ridiculous as he is in any movie they stick him in. I don't know who told him he could act, but it was probably the same guy who told him he could rap. Jason Patric doesn't really have that leading man thing going on--he never has had it-- but he was pretty good in this film. The guy's a solid actor, just nothing to write home about. Overall, it was a good, mindless 90 minutes of entertainment with a sketchy plot and an unbelievable premise which means it was better than 80% of the crap coming out of Hollywood today.

... Means I have lost the will to live. Formulaic, boring, and nothing going for it - even Bruce and John. Sad that they have added their names to this. Misleading and just pretty damn awful - although I am sure that the B actors are all performing their socks off.....l Watch if you have nothing better to do. Other than that - avoid. I am sure I could have done something better with the last 90 minutes of my life.

Oh I have to add more lines..... OK.... Ummm.... Guns, druggies, bad acting, underwhelming locations, more bad acting, odd cars, bad filming, awful director, terrible lighting, strange Japanese man, ... Just odd. Could have been great and I am so disappointed. No spoilers - because you can predict the film start to finish.

"The Prince" is entirely unoriginal as it doesn't show us anything we haven't seen before. It's generic and formulaic. Everything in this movie you've seen in other movies that came before it, only those movies did it better and they did it first. Uninspired would be the word. No creativity to be found anywhere.

Characters: bland. Action: bland. Story: bland. Cinematography: bland.

The setup is (too) similar to "Taken" where an "aged father formerly known as Prince" who happened to be a big deal in the local crime scene in whatever city two decades ago goes looking for his missing daughter killing a bunch of bad guys along the way.

The movie tries and fails to establish the main character as this legendary criminal who kicked butt long ago and who now has come back to his old turf in order to save his daughter. How do we know he is this legendary tough guy? Mostly because people in the movie claim that he is (please: show, don't tell), but Jason Patric just can't pull it off as the lead, even if he might be an otherwise competent actor.

I think this is mostly the result of poorly written dialog & scenes that just fail to sell us on his violent past. He kinda just seems like a nice guy. Maybe if the movie hadn't tried so hard to be "Taken" in the first place and instead made the main character appear more vulnerable & relatable, then discrepancy between what we are promised and what we actually get to see wouldn't be so glaring.

Speaking of promises: Despite what the movie poster might imply, neither Bruce Willis nor John Cusack get much screen time, though it's not like their characters are interesting in any way. More screen time with them wouldn't have saved the movie. Willis doesn't give a damn because "yay money" and Cussack apparently lost a bet or something, because why else would he want to be part of this movie.

I don't mind unoriginal movies, if at least they are well executed in a "guilty pleasure" kind of way. A good example of this would be the semi-recent sci-fi action flick "Lock-Up", a movie which scratches certain itches and succeeds to be entertaining, even if it has no Oscar worthy performances or a mind-blowing story. "The Prince" doesn't provide any guilty pleasure. It provides a reason to call customer service and demand your money back or at least a free rental of "Lock-Up".

Some may say "Well it's a genre movie. It doesn't try to reinvent the wheel. Take it for what it is: An action movie!" I am. The movie doesn't succeed. I have watched my fair share of Jet Li/Jason Statham/Vin Diesel etc. movies and suffered through mediocre acting and story telling and in turn got rewarded with at least a couple of interestingly choreographed fight scenes or otherwise neat visuals or interesting set pieces. Not so here. It's just some guy punching or shooting bad guys at boring locations. No interesting fight choreography, camera work, tension... nothing. Most of the action involves our main guy being shot at by incompetent stormtroopers... I mean bad guys, quickly taking cover, then eventually shooting the bad guys because they suck at taking cover -> Level complete.

It's not that the people involved in this movie were entirely incompetent, the actors are doing an okay job, the lighting is fine, the camera is, well... capturing what needs to be captured, the story is at least not a confusing mess, the character motivations are mostly clear etc., but ultimately nothing in this movie stands out as original or particularly well done. There is not a single "Hey, that was cool/interesting/impressive." moment.

"The Prince" will leave you entirely unsatisfied as you won't care about any of the characters or the twist-free conclusion nor will you get a rush out of any of the action scenes. This movie is not worth your time and especially not worth your money. It's an incredibly lazy straight-to-rental cash-in, using Willis and Cusack to lure people into watching it. Please don't reward such business practices.