"The Prime Minister" is the type of fast-paced crime/thriller that delivers copious amounts of action and suspense, however, it simultaneously also requires an almost complete suspension of disbelief on behalf of the viewer. If, and only if, you manage to turn off your skepticism regarding the overall story and the near-ludicrous plot-twists, the film will provide fantastic and non-stop entertainment. In case you swear by realism, don't even bother to press the play-button.
Writer/director Erik Van Looy is, in Flanders at least, a well-respected and much-loved media figure. He's the host of the most popular quiz on prime-time TV, appears in the panel of several games and talk shows and the films he directed ("De Zaak Alzheimer", "Loft") rank among the biggest blockbusters in history. His American adventure to direct a remake of "Loft" perhaps didn't work out as successful as he might had hoped, but he certainly returned to Belgium with a typically "Hollywoodian" idea for a crowd-pleasing and intense thriller. Our national pride in acting, Koen De Bouw, stars as the Belgian Prime Minister. There goes the plausibility already, in fact, because this country never had such a charismatic and eloquent prime minister. On his way to a European-American summit in Brussels, he is kidnapped and learns that his family - wife and two children - are held hostage, and that they will be executed if the Prime Minister himself doesn't agree to murder the American President during their private meeting in the afternoon.
Great aspects include a handful of totally unexpected but seriously vile and brutal execution sequences, the clever references towards actual Belgian politicians and the sadistic role of Stijn Van Opstal as the driver. I previously only knew him as an adequate but inconspicuous supportive actor in local TV-series ("Tabula Rasa", "Met Man en Macht"), but he deeply impresses here as the downright evil and unscrupulous terrorist who enjoys torturing, humiliating and provoking the Prime Minister and his PR-assistant. Even with a fair portion of suspension of disbelief, there are still a couple of major defaults. Van Looy unnecessarily adds melodrama to the plot with a typically cliched twist regarding the Minister's private life. And, surely, the climax could have been slightly better? I appreciate that Van Looy didn't turn his protagonist into a bona fide action hero, like Harrison Ford in "Air Force One", but there must have been other options to avoid such an anti-climax?
