All Movie Reviews: PRINCE IT'S SHOWTIME!

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Lara

@fly2me

Sparkler

+ 3

Posted: 15 years ago

Please post all the movie reviews for PRINCE IT'S SHOWTIME here.
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I'm super excited for Vivek!!
(:

Edited by fly2me - 15 years ago

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Lara

@fly2me

Sparkler

+ 3

Posted: 15 years ago

By Taran Adarsh, April 9, 2010 - 13:54 IST

Hollywood has come up with so many movies on memory loss, while Bollywood too has had its share of films which depicted the protagonist losing his memory, GHAJINI being the most recent example. But what if someone robs your memory? Quite an interesting thought, isn't it?

One of the advantages of having a GenNext director is, he's ready to take risks, ready to tread the untrodden path, ready to go where no one has been before. But there's a disadvantage too: Visuals and technique take precedence, while story takes a backseat. PRINCE has a terrific first half, where technique and content go hand in hand, but technique overpowers the content in its post-interval portions.

What surprises you is that PRINCE is penned by the writer of RACE [Shiraz Ahmed] and like RACE, PRINCE too has several twists and turns every 15 odd minutes. But the twists and turns are a mixed bag here - captivating at times, not captivating at some places. More on that later!

On the brighter side, PRINCE has great stunts and chase sequences [Allan Amin], fantastic visuals [South Africa] and of course, a chartbuster musical score [Sachin Gupta]. And these three factors, coupled with Vivek Oberoi's convincing performance, should take the film to safety!

One of the savviest thieves in the world [Vivek Oberoi] commits the biggest heist of his life. He wakes up next the morning to realize he has a gunshot wound on his arm that he doesn't remember getting. In his quest to find answers, he discovers his name is Prince, he used to work for a man named Sarang and his girlfriend's name is Maya.

He is being hunted by the secret service of India, the CBI and the biggest white collared criminals in the world. He is the most wanted man in the country because only he knows the whereabouts of the heist, which contains a secret that is linked not only to his loss of memory, but threatens the future of the human race.

Every day he meets a new girl claiming to be Maya. He doesn't remember where he has hidden the Heist. He has just dive days of his life. Time is running out...

Although PRINCE stands on a novel premise, flashes of the Dev Anand starrer JEWEL THIEF do cross your mind. PRINCE starts off with a heist and soon after, Vivek realises that his memory has been 'erased'. The mystery only deepens when he meets three different women, all posing as Maya and all having a new story to tell. So far, so good!

But the difficult part is to keep the viewer's interest alive till the finale and that's where PRINCE starts crumbling. The second hour - the entire journey of Prince and the real Maya going on a wild chase to trace the coin and also regain Prince's memory - is exciting in bits and spurts.

The concept of erasing a person's memory and then inserting it back with chips and gizmos sounds wow, but the way it has been projected in the film is ludicrous and far from convincing. Ditto for the climax, when Prince traces the villain to the Afghan-Pakistan border. He does so after he had hidden a device in the villain's shoes, while he was being bashed in the earlier sequence. Also, showing Prince having the same qualities as Spiderman [he can cast a web anytime he's in distress] makes you wonder, is he an ordinary mortal or a super human?

Director Kookie Gulati has an eye for visuals and that's evident from the very start of the film itself. The film looks magnificent and wears an international look as well. Shiraz Ahmed's screenplay is watertight in the first hour, but leaves a lot to be desired in the latter portions. Dialogues [Mayur Puri] are well worded. Cinematography [Vishnu Rao] is top notch and the eye-filling locations are a visual treat. Allan Amin's stunts and chases are mesmeric. Sachin Gupta's musical score is trendy and catchy.

Vivek is super in a rather difficult role. He is excellent in dramatic portions especially and carries off the stunts with remarkable ease. Nandana is effective. Neeru doesn't get much scope. Aruna is the best of the lot. Sanjay Kapoor enacts his part well. Dalip Tahil is alright. Isaiah has screen presence and looks ferocious on screen. Rajesh Khattar is hardly there.

On the whole, PRINCE has great music, super stunts, Vivek Oberoi's bravura performance and terrific promotion as its trump card, but where it falters is in its writing [in its second half mianly]. Yet, all said and done, the film has the merits to strike a chord with the youth and lovers of masala movies.

Bollywoodhungama!
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Lara

@fly2me

Sparkler

+ 3

Posted: 15 years ago

Spicezee Bureau

Vivek Oberoi starrer 'Prince' is clearly inspired by Aamir's 'Ghajini', where the hero struggles with memory loss. Director Kookie Gulati's flick has everything that makes it a Box Office success. Written by Shiraz Ahmed of 'Race' fame, the film has high adrenaline action sequences by Allan Amin and scintillating music by Sachin Gupta.

'Prince' is the story of a thief, who commits one of the biggest robberies of his life. However, when he wakes up the next morning, he discovers gunfire wound on his arm and a memory loss. From here onwards the journey of our hero begins, who is set to discover his real identity. Gradually, he comes to know that his name is Prince and he works for Sarang. Also, the name of his girlfriend is Maya.

Hunted by the CBI and one of the biggest crime lords in the world, Prince is chased by all as he is the only one who knows the whereabouts of the stolen goods. In the meantime, Prince meets a string of women who claim to be the love of his life - Maya, with each having a different version to truth.

'Prince' uses some of the finest locales that translate well on screen, director Kookie Gulati's vision for the magnificent and the opulent is quite visible and the high action sequences offer a rare visual treat.

Even so, 'Prince' completely fails when it comes to keep the interests of viewers alive. Though the chase sequences are extremely sleek, Prince's desperation to reclaim his lost identity becomes cumbersome after a point.

In all, with 'Prince', Vivek Oberoi has given one of his finest performances. The dramatic sequences and stunts are simply superb. Coming to female leads, Nandana, Neeru and Aruna are quite effective. Yet, the only glitch to the Box Office success of 'Prince' can be its wobbly script.

Rating: Three cheers for this one!
👏

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salma

@starchase

Rocker

+ 4

Posted: 15 years ago

waitin for public reviews. then will decide to go an watch it😊

Edited by salma434 - 15 years ago

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lalita

@laly

Inactive

+ 2

Posted: 15 years ago

Masand's: Prince is marvelously moronic

Action thriller Prince is a marvelously moronic movie that uses visual effects to fake everything from stunt scenes and explosions, to hi-tech gizmos and even the Mumbai skyline. Why then, may I ask, must we endure all that over-the-top acting from leading man Vivek Oberoi and the rest of this film's dreadful cast, when the director could have given us virtual characters instead?

Vivek stars as Prince, a slick thief who in the film's opening scene pulls off a diamond heist in a high-security facility, using all kinds of cool contraptions including a vacuum pump which, after that baby delivery scene in 3 Idiots, has emerged the go-to-gadget for all seemingly impossible tasks.

Prince wakes up one morning with no memory, and a bullet wound in his arm. He must now retrace his steps to figure out who he really is, and why he has no recollection of his past.

The film's laughably silly plot involves the search for a coveted coin which contains a memory-stealing chip that everyone from the cops to the criminals are determined to get their hands on. There's an assembly line of villains including one with a mechanical arm, another wearing enough gold chains to give Bappi Lahiri a complex, and finally a heavily-tattooed femme fatale in S&M gear.

The actors struggle to pull off cool, but given those CGI-enhanced action scenes, the ill-fitting leather costumes, and the puerile dialogue, cool is impossible to achieve. Even the obvious inspiration from Mission Impossible, Matrix and the Bourne movies doesn't seem to help director Kookie Gulati in constructing a half-convincing tale.

Not that it stops our hero, Vivek Oberoi, from having what appears to be the most fun he's ever had on screen -- riding a bike off the ledge of a building, putting his tongue down the throats of three starlets, and using the "I've-had-my-memory-erased" excuse to not even bother with a credible performance. Even in scenes where he's meant to be in a comatose state, Vivek hams it up embarrassingly.

To be fair, the film's got a few hummable tracks, and some of the daredevil action scenes are exciting too, but in the end Prince might be worth a watch because it's one of those films that's so bad, it's good.

I'm going with two out of five for director Kookie Gulati's Prince. Funnier than any comedy you've seen recently.

Rating: 2 / 5

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lalita

@laly

Inactive

+ 2

Posted: 15 years ago

Oh boy, Oberoi

Prince is a mindless mishmash of various superhero and caper films mixed with a Don like amnesia track and Bond inspired action sequences, all served up Bollywood style. The film is packed with bikini clad babes, bikes and bad guys on choppers, with everyone wearing expensive designer clothes and shades.

The production design is expensive, the camerawork sharp, while the action sequences are elaborate. Naturally, there was no budget for a writer, so the story is pure garbled nonsense, rehashed yet again by debutant director Kookie.

Backed by a thunderous soundtrack, Prince starts precisely, with a date reading 4th August, 5.47 pm. A world class diamond thief, Prince (Vivek Oberoi) breaks into a fully protected diamond corporation office in Mumbai to steal all the diamonds. First he disguises himself to get in, then he neutralises the security cameras, then gets an accomplice to raise a periscope-like tube, from where he vacuums the diamonds out.

Finally when the guards start to chase him, he leaps off the tall building, parachutes down on the truck and escapes, without leaving a single clue for the CBI cop (Sanjay Kapoor). For he is Prince, and he is funky. Then he executes similar heists across the world, from Jakarta to Paris.

Three months later, he wakes up in a fancy apartment in South Africa with no memory. Damn. Then he meets Maya (Neeru Singh) who tells him that he was shot at while stealing a mysterious gold coin, which has a chip through which you can erase a person's memory. Okay. A lot of crooks, namely the brutal Sarang, as well as the Indian government, namely IGRIP (Indian Government Research and Protocol), represented by the suave Colonel Dalip Tahil, are after the coin.

A while later, a better looking Maya (Nandana Sen) turns up, revealing the earlier one was a fraud. This Maya 2 says that Prince is actually a CBI officer looking for the chip. Some more action happens, like Sarang killing his enemies by placing a bomb in a flying aircraft, then parachuting off onto a yacht, while the plane blows up sky high. Killing anyone with a gun is clearly pass, while a knife is just cheap.

While the viewer is figuring out which Maya to ogle at, Prince finally discovers the coin in his shoe. Maya 2 arranges to give it to Sarang for lots of money. Evil boy Sarang lands up with a bunch of henchmen, Maya 2 turns out to be a double crosser, while the coin turns out to be a fake. As Prince is wondering what to do, a girl wearing a helmet appears over the cliff on a paraglider, mounted with two machine guns.

She proceeds to shoot the hell out of the bad boys, allowing Prince to escape on a bike, which he drives over a narrow wooden bridge over a gorge. Now who's this girl. She says she is Maya too, no three. Interval. The rest of the movie is the same in reverse, with some more silly twists thrown in. Vivek Oberoi is sharp in his role, Nandana Sen looks hot but Prince stays well short of being a king, despite the fancy gadgets involved.