The Prince

... 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.

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)

"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.

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.

"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.