In Hollywood, combining different genres is a gamble. It’s an interesting mix of conventional clichés and subtle twists on the expected when it works out. A confusing mix of parts that don’t work well together might occur when it does not. For those looking for a fast-paced action picture with a familiar fairytale theme, Hulu’s The Princess falls into this category, with enough ingenious twists to keep the audience guessing. His 2019 martial arts movie Furie was selected for Academy Awards consideration and set a new record for the biggest grossing Vietnamese picture of all time by Le-Van Kiet, the Vietnamese-born filmmaker. The Princess, which follows in the footsteps of Furie’s acclaimed action sequences, has a near-constant barrage of more complex battle scenes.
Quickly embracing its fairytale concept, the picture opens in an absurdly high tower with the title character, played by The Act’s Joey King, imprisoned in the topmost room. While fighting her way down the tower, she awakens to find an army assembling in the castle courtyard below her. She then does something you seldom see in fairytale stories: She proceeds to mercilessly punch, stab, and otherwise execute everyone who gets in the way of her mission of escaping. Even while the story is straightforward, the R-rated film’s desire to go all-in on action is a risk that pays off handsomely. In her portrayal as the film’s protagonist, King is a pleasant surprise. So far, her acting credits haven’t exactly suggested that The Kissing Booth franchise actress has latent action talents, but she appears right at home pivoting from one skirmish to the next as she fights through the floors of a building in order to get her freedom.
When it comes to one-shot combat scenes, The Princess does not rely as heavily on Kiet’s camerawork as Furie, but it does not shy away from them either—and King doesn’t appear to have any difficulty managing the prolonged fights perfectly framed in Kiet. To keep up with the film’s amazing stunt crew, Kiet plainly places his faith in King. That trust is well-rewarded in the form of a scene after the sequence that is both visually stunning and strikingly different. The foes she meets in real life are a lot like the ones she faces in computer games. Initially facing off against a pair of inept goons, she soon finds herself facing off against an enormous beast-like berserker, an evil knight in shining armour (another parody of the classic fairytale motif), and a host of other challenges as she makes her way down the tower.
Gareth Evans’ furious 2011 action thriller The Raid: Redemption, which put him and actor Iko Uwais on Hollywood’s radar, has echoes in The Princess. The Princess takes the simple (but plainly effective) notion of a protagonist locked in a building who must battle his way out through an apparently unending horde and gives it some smart subversiveness by wrapping it in well-worn fairytale components. When the invading army’s leader (played by Dominic Cooper) tries to propose marriage to King’s character, she’s no helpless damsel in distress. Instead, she fights her way to a showdown with the attractive prince (played by Cooper). After some time spent climbing the tower, her once-fluffy garment begins to take on a more utilitarian appearance, adorned with the armour and weapons she’s amassed on her journey.
Some brilliant supporting performers also shine in the action moments of The Princess, despite the fact that King is the film’s driving force.
Veronica Ngo, who plays King’s martial-arts coach in Furie, makes the most of her time on screen with some terrific sequences that demonstrate her ability to blend story and action evenly. Black Widow actress Olga Kurylenko, on the other hand, continues to be rewarded for her action-heavy villain parts by film filmmakers. Her portrayal of Cooper’s psychotic prince’s whip-wielding bodyguard in The Princess is nearly as entertaining as her legendary role as Taskmaster, the copycat assassin in the aforementioned Marvel film. It’s easy to get carried away by most of The Princess, but the picture suffers when the tempo slows down to allow for some unnecessary exposition. King’s character reminisces on the circumstances that led to her imprisonment in the tower, how she became such a skilled warrior, and another history at various times in the film’s running time The film’s pace is frequently slowed by these (mercifully brief) flashbacks, which provide nothing in the way of narrative payoff.
The film is at its finest when you don’t know what to anticipate from King’s character, thus allowing viewers to construct their own assumptions about her past could even be better than the answers provided by the film. For the most part, viewers that give The Princess a chance will find it to be an enjoyable surprise, despite the frustrating slowdowns. Despite the fact that the idea is straightforward, the film manages to intrigue and subvert your expectations with a series of surprising revelations and well-choreographed action sequences.
The Princess, a film by Le-Van Kiet, will debut on Hulu on July 1st.