THE PRINCE
DIRECTOR: Brian A Miller
CAST: Jason Patric, Bruce Willis, John Cusack, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Gia Mategna, Jessica Lowndes
CLASSIFICATION: TBA
RUNNING TIME: TBA
RATING: **
A retired assassin is forced to use his special skills while moving heaven and earth to find his kidnapped daughter.
No, it’s not Taken but rather The Prince, Brian A Miller’s B-movie action-thriller that mainly serves to illustrate how far such former marquee names as Jason Patric, Bruce Willis and John Cusack have fallen.
Being given a limited theatrical release, the film should score well on home video formats because of its familiar faces, but it sorely illustrates that these talented actors are in desperate need of career reassessments.
The story concerns Paul (Patric), a widowed father who discovers that his college-age daughter Beth (Mategna) has gone missing. Enlisting one of her school friends (Lowndes) to help track her down, he soon finds himself confronting an array of bad guys whom he dispatches with the sort of ruthless efficiency and seeming invulnerability specific to action-movie heroes. The trail eventually leads to a drug dealer, appropriately known as “The Pharmacy” (Jackson), who’s been supplying the strung-up young woman with heroin.
But the real bad guy is Omar (Willis), a crime boss whose wife and daughter were blown up in a car bomb planted by Paul years earlier in a deadly mistake that has Omar wanting revenge. Along the way Paul also enlists the services of a former cohort (Cusack) who demonstrates that he, too, has lost none of his violent mojo.
The screenplay by Andre Fabrizio and Jeremy Passmore is strictly by the numbers, essentially repeating the same scene over and over in which Paul politely asks various unsavoury characters for information, is rudely rebuffed, and then, to quote one of Willis’s more quality projects, gets medieval on their asses.
Wit is in short supply, but at least Miller keeps things moving briskly throughout the film.
Patric brings his trademark intensity to his role, Cusack provides his usual sly presence, and Willis, whose shooting schedule reportedly consisted of a mere five days, picks up a pay cheque.
The latter’s henchman is played by Jung Ji-Hoon, aka Korean pop star Rain, whose presence at least guarantees decent box office totals in Asian markets.
As with so many B-movies, the film was shot partially in New Orleans, which never fails to provide an exotic atmosphere. – Hollywood Reporter
If you liked Rage or Taken, you will like this.