Let’s get something out of the way: I admire Sean Baker. The man has an eye for realism and an ear for human struggle. The Florida Project? Great. Red Rocket? Weird, risky, and occasionally brilliant. But Prince of Broadway—his 2008 handheld hustle through New York’s knockoff handbag underworld—feels like watching someone rehearse for a good movie that never actually got made.
Baker wants us to feel like we’re right there on the sidewalks of Manhattan, in the chaotic thrum of immigrant hustle, love, and fatherhood. What we get instead is 100 minutes of grainy digital footage of people yelling at each other, intercut with scenes of bootleg Louis Vuitton bags and emotional breakthroughs that land like expired tofu. This isn’t cinéma vérité. It’s cinéma “Is this still going?”
Our “hero” is Lucky, a Ghanaian street hustler played by Prince Adu, who spends his days schlepping fake designer goods out of a shop near Broadway and his nights dodging responsibility like it’s an unpaid MetroCard. Lucky isn’t charming. He isn’t even particularly competent. He’s the cinematic equivalent of a Craigslist scam—you kind of know what you’re getting into, but you’re still disappointed when it shows up.
Things get spicy—relatively speaking—when Lucky’s ex-girlfriend shows up and drops off a surprise child like she’s returning a library book. “Here’s your son,” she says, and vanishes. Lucky, naturally, reacts like any reasonable man caught between fatherhood and bootleg fashion: by blinking confusedly and walking in circles. From there, the film becomes a jittery meditation on reluctant parenthood, urban poverty, and what happens when your side hustle turns into your full-time disaster.
Let’s talk about the cinematography. Shot with what appears to be a camcorder someone borrowed from their cousin in 2002, the entire film looks like a lost episode of COPS—minus the action, plus baby formula. Every frame is shaky, overexposed, and allergic to lighting. You don’t watch Prince of Broadway so much as endure it. It’s a movie that dares you to find focus—in both the literal and emotional sense.
The sound design? Oh, you mean the wall of muffled city noise, interrupted by occasional crying, screaming, and Lucky muttering about diapers? Yes, it’s “authentic,” but so is food poisoning. And about as fun.
The story meanders like a drunk tourist trying to find a halal cart. We follow Lucky as he schleps the kid around the city, tries to keep his fake-bag hustle afloat, and awkwardly attempts to grow a soul. There are some plot threads—his friend Levon, who also works in the knockoff game, gets caught up in his own nonsense—but they’re so thin you could floss with them. Nothing builds. Nothing pays off. It’s just a loop of stress, bad decisions, and Lucky staring at this baby like it’s a parking ticket that won’t go away.
Now, Lucky as a character is supposed to be morally complicated—gritty, real, flawed but lovable. But instead, he comes off like a man who can’t figure out how microwaves work. His parenting strategy swings between “ignore the child entirely” and “yell at the nearest adult.” When he finally tries to bond with the kid, it’s less “heartwarming” and more “man learns baby is not a grenade.”
And that baby? The best actor in the film. Seriously. Every time the kid cries, which is often, it’s the most believable moment on screen. You know why? Because we’re all crying inside, too. Watching this movie is like being stuck on the A train during rush hour with no air conditioning and a man in the corner shouting about fake Gucci. It’s immersive. But do you want it? Do you need it? Not unless your therapist says it counts as exposure therapy.
The dialogue feels like it was improvised by people who had just been told what a movie was ten minutes before filming. You can practically hear the director behind the camera whispering, “Just talk. Be natural.” The result is scenes that feel like conversations you accidentally overhear while waiting in line at CVS: mildly interesting for 30 seconds, then excruciating.
By the time we get to the film’s limp conclusion—spoiler: Lucky maybe starts to slightly care about his kid—you’re left wondering what the hell the point of any of it was. It’s like Baker had a powerful idea (“What if a street hustler had to become a dad?”) and then decided not to write a second draft. Or a first.
And don’t come at me with “But it’s a slice of life!” I’ve seen slices of life. This one’s mostly gristle. It’s undercooked and overindulgent, a film that mistakes monotony for meaning. Yes, life is chaotic, messy, and often unresolved. But that doesn’t mean your movie has to be, too. There’s realism, and then there’s just filming people walk around yelling and calling it art.
Final Verdict?
Prince of Broadway is a case study in indie cinema’s most annoying habits: handheld cameras that induce nausea, plots that refuse to start, characters who confuse “flawed” with “insufferable,” and the kind of raw “realism” that makes you miss the clean, sanitized lies of Hollywood. If you’re looking for a nuanced portrait of immigration, fatherhood, and hustle in New York City—keep looking. This ain’t it. Watch it if you’re a die-hard Sean Baker completist or if you’ve recently lost a bet. Everyone else? Buy a fake Louis Vuitton bag and stare at it for two hours. You’ll get more out of it.