Even though he's only adopted, Jaggoi (Wan
Hanafi Su) chooses Prince (Julian Cheah) over his real son
Putra (Jehan Miskin) to become his successor as CEO of his business
empire. Putra couldn't care less, because he has been more of a playboy
all of his life anyways, and as long as he gets a generous allowance
(which he does), why worry about work, right? But Putra has fallen in
with the wrong crowd, and before awfully long, a
"businesspartner" (Himanshu Bhatt) convinces Putra to shoot his
father and Prince's girlfriend (Tara Wallace) and have Prince flown out of
the country, then take over daddy's business empire. So why not kill
Prince as well? Because you need a scapegoat for the two murders, don't
you? In his involuntary exile in France, Prince meets Carlton (Michael
Madsen), a shady business associate of his father's who tells him he can
take him back into Malaysia to reclaim his father's company. Prince
figures he's got nothing to lose but everything to gain, so he agrees -
and only in Malaysia does he realize he has made a deal with the devil, as
the methods Carlton plans to apply to get Prince back onto the throne
again are about as wicked and evil as Putra's hostile takeover. What's
more shocking though is that Prince seems to gradually lose his set of
morals the longer he works with Carlton and his cronies. So will Prince
regain what's legally his? And if yes, at what price? Prince
of the City is a fast moving low budget action flick - that's not
without its flaws: Especially when it comes to character development,
everything remains a bit on the flat side, many of their actions seem to
be under-motivated (why is it that easy for Putra to shoot his father?),
and a few times too often, genre mainstays are chosen over proper
storytelling. All this is only of minor importance here though because
the movie is extremely well-paced, beautifully shot, effectively edited
... and hey, Michael Madsen is in it. Sure, he plays exactly the role he
can sleepwalk through - but that doesn't mean he isn't still excellent,
right?
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