'The Princess' Review: Hail to the King, Baby
R: Strong/bloody violence and some language
Runtime: 1 Hr and 30 Minutes
Production Companies: 20th Century Studios, Original Film
Distributor: Hulu
Director: Le-Van Kiet
Writers: Ben Lustig, Jake Thornton
Cast: Joey King, Dominic Cooper, Olga Kurylenko, Veronica Ngo
Release Date: July 1, 2022
When a beautiful, strong-willed princess refuses to wed the cruel sociopath to whom she is betrothed, she is kidnapped and locked in a remote tower of her father's castle. With her scorned, vindictive suitor intent on taking her father's throne, the princess must protect her family and save her kingdom.
At first glance, The Princess seems like your run-of-the-mill, straight-to-streaming R-rated action flick with the #girlpower tag smeared all over it. Lord knows how we trudged through the blandest of crops with Netflix’s Gunpowder Milkshake and Kate last year. What sets The Princess apart from the egregious mediocrity of those aforementioned fares is the filmmaker attached to it. If you look at the fine print, you will spot director Le-Van Kiet’s name. For those who don’t know, Kiet is a damn killer Vietnamese action filmmaker who helmed a badass action flick named Furie a few years ago. That movie, which also starred actress Veronica Ngo, delivered exhilarating action sequences with slick camerawork and tight fight choreography. It was so badass that Vietnam selected it to represent the country at that year’s Academy Awards. It didn’t make the final cut overall, but still. Those attributes are seamlessly carried over to The Princess, a brutal and bloody beat-’em-up action flick that is essentially The Raid for those who thought Princess Fiona didn’t fuck up as many people as she should’ve in the Shrek films.
The premise is relatively simple: a Princess… named Princess (Joey King) must make her way down her family’s castle from the highest chamber to stop evil Lord Julius (Dominic Cooper) from taking over her kingdom. Julius’ countless goons stand in her way, but from the opening scene through the rest of the movie, she proves to be a royal weapon of mass destruction.
In the hands of an inexperienced filmmaker who isn’t fluent in the realm of action, The Princess would’ve easily fallen through the cracks as another forgettable action flick. Thankfully, Kiet's keen eye for combat elevates this feature tenfold. Similar to The Raid, most of the feature takes place within the confines of one building… I mean… castle, meaning that space is often limited when it comes to combat. But that’s no problem for Kiet since his camera movement keeps you close to The Princess as she’s mowing down baddies one by one. An ample amount of the shot composition during sequences of combat features quick pans that track each move Princess makes when she’s kicking ass. The camera is so swift, that you can't decipher which shot was Joey King and which was her stunt double. Despite the lighting being far too bright to match the film’s gritty nature, when you get to the bloody, brutal kills that would make every Disney princess blush, Kiet makes sure you witness them in all their gory glory.
Since Ramona and Beezus in 2010, Joey King has come into her own as a powerful actress who proved time and again that she can keep you engaged no matter the quality of the movie she stars in. Say what you will about those awful Kissing Booth movies, she put her whole heart into them. Now that she’s leading a solo action flick Die Hard-style, she ferociously kicks ass. Donning a consistently thick and old-timey British accent, King’s energetic warrior persona has you rooting for her throughout. While her plight is simply her storming the castle floor by floor, they attempt to give her a bit of character by integrating scenes of what led to her being chained up by this rapscallion Lord and how she developed certain skills.
In those past sequences, you meet Linh (Veronica Ngo), Princess’s skilled mentor who shares quasi-romantic chemistry with her that ranges between heartfelt and weird. Whenever it’s the two of them onscreen, tag-teaming against guards or Olga Kurylenko––who looks like she’s cosplaying Ivy from SoulCalibur, even down to the extended bladed whip she wields––the fun is cranked up a notch. The chemistry that King and Ngo share is delightful and as strong as the one Ngo shares with Kiet, who lets her shine as the MVP.
Within the first several minutes of The Princess, it’s obvious that the tone doesn’t take itself too seriously. It plays up its campiness 100% and you adore it… until anybody opens their mouth. The dialogue is as serviceable as it can be because you know the action compensates, but there are bouts of dialogue that are so derivative. As foreshadowed by the “Bad Reputation” needle drop in the trailer, you can only imagine how the plot hinges on the gender role of the Princess. Taking a page out of Brave, Princess is to be betrothed for the kingdom to have a good heir, but instead of her dad giving her the crown, he sends her off to be betrothed by Julius, which bites everyone in the ass. I made the Princess Fiona comparison but most of the movie’s perspective on gender roles feels right out of the early 2000s, during the age of Shrek where the joke was, “What if a girl could kick ass and made witty remarks about being a girl that kicks ass?”
The Raid influence is felt throughout this film, not only in setup but in structure as well. Though whenever it cuts to the past to make surprising plot developments, it lacks that element of surprise to keep you on edge. It disrupts the fast-paced energy to double down on the theme of gender equality that has been done to death.
This might be a nitpick but I was not fond of how this film was lit. The lighting is so bright that the sets end up looking more animated than the action. The quality is equal to that of a network television show and it kept distracting me. Remember the ABC show Galavant from the early 2010s? You know, that quasi-raunchy musical set in a fantasy world? The Princess looked exactly like that at some points.
All hail the [Joey] King, for The Princess is a swashbuckling The Raid-meets-Princess Fiona action flick that’s fun as hell. The early 2000s sensibilities might disrupt the pacing and tone of this relatively short thrill ride, but fans of Le-Van Kiet (Furie) will rejoice thanks to his slick and stylish direction that keeps the tightly choreographed action exhilarating while Joey King and Veronica Ngo deliver badass performances.
