<Review by: Sailesh Ghelani>

Directed by Brian A. Miller. Starring Jason Patric, Bruce Willis, John Cusack, Gia Mantegna, Jessica Lowndes, Curtis Jackson, Jung Ji-hoon

The Prince stars Jason Patric… oh you don’t recall who the actor is… well that’s because he isn’t really that big or that charismatic an actor to remember.

What an earth is this utter drivel Hollywood is churning out? They’re setting films in the 80s so they can get away with cheap production standards and using ‘big name’ stars who one can only imagine are doing the films for money.

Paul (Jason Patric) is a mechanic with a past. He eats pizza while Skyping with his college-going daughter Beth (Gia Mantegna) who looks like she’s pretty stoned but somehow this dad with a past doesn’t see it. And then she disappears. So he has to go after her but encounters only very unhelpful and loud-mouthed teen girls and bouncers who say, “After a while they all look the same.” Then teenage Angela (Jessica Lowndes) decides to help Paul find her ‘friend’ and his daughter but only after he offers her $500. Wow, I’m not to keen on America all of a sudden.

On his search for Beth, Paul lands up in his old stomping grounds filled with drug dealers, thugs and killers, but he can handle it all. He wallops three guys and Angela is like, “What just happened?” with the look of someone you’d think had just seen aliens landing on earth.  And then she decides to feel him up and give him a lap dance. Hmmm.

It turns out Paul made a huge and regrettable mistake years ago when he was trying to bump off a criminal business head called Omar (Bruce Willis). And it turns out that his daughter is actually a drug addict who he has to rescue. Omar has nothing to do with that but he wants to get revenge on Paul since now he’s in his back yard. Hard to believe that Omar, with all that rage of having his own family taken away from him, would not have pursued Paul with a vengeance. So now he’s in town let’s try and get back at him! Seriously Bruce Willis? I mean did the Die Hard films not pay you enough?

And then you have John Cusack as Paul’s friend Sam who looks like he has a bad comb over and a searing headache. All the good work these actors have done, down the drain with shitty films like this. It’s sad really. Poor Jason Patric is as serious as can be and gives as much grit to his role as possible while he shoots faceless attackers who drop before him as he reloads diligently again and again to show you it’s not as easy as it seems.

The Prince is a poorly made film, with plot holes and some shaky acting.  You can barely even comprehend Jung Ji-hoon with his accent but Hollywood’s mandate now is to appeal to a Chinese audience. Too bad for India’s Irrfan Khan then.