A princess is trapped at the top of a tall tower. She lies unconscious and in chains in a lavish bedroom, dressed for her forced wedding to an evil lord. However, there's no knight in shining armor coming to save the title character of Hulu's delightfully ridiculous action movie The Princess. She's more than capable of saving herself, and she'll nearly single-handedly save the rest of her kingdom, too. From the moment she opens her eyes in that bed, the nameless princess (Joey King) is ready to take on anyone who gets in her way.
There's not much else to the story of The Princess, which cobbles together some familiar fairy-tale archetypes to create a basic framework for its fabulous action sequences. Director Le-Van Kiet, known for the 2019 Vietnamese cult-favorite action movie Furie, doesn't need anything more than those basics to deliver one of the most inspired and entertaining action movies of 2022. The Princess makes its influences obvious, from The Raid to Die Hard to John Wick, but Kiet puts just the right spin on them to make The Princess feel fresh, and King proves that she's ready for a whole new level of movie stardom.
Like The Raid or comic-book adaptation Dredd, The Princess follows its main character from one level of a tall building to another, encountering various obstacles along the way. Rather than getting to the top, the princess needs to descend to the bottom of the tower so that she can save her family from the sinister invader Julius (Dominic Cooper), who's determined to make himself the kingdom's new ruler. Flashbacks reveal that because the kingdom has no male heir, the princess was set to marry Julius and ensure stability. When she spurned him at the altar, it ignited his rage, leading him to reveal his cruel plan to take over.
Julius is holding the king (Ed Stoppard), the queen (Alex Reid), and their younger daughter Violet (Katelyn Rose Downey) captive until he can complete the union with the princess and be crowned the rightful ruler, at least technically. Cooper plays Julius as a one-note sneering villain, which is exactly what the role calls for, but he's consistently upstaged by Olga Kurylenko as Julius' consort and chief enforcer, Moira. Action-movie veteran Kurylenko makes for a more compelling antagonist, wielding a long whip with a deadly blade at the end of it. There's far more excitement in watching Moira face off against the princess than there is in the inevitable final battle between the princess and Julius.
Before getting to that final battle, the princess has to plow her way through dozens of henchmen, which she does with believable skill and agility, despite her much smaller size. In flashbacks, Kiet and writers Ben Lustig and Jake Thornton reveal that the princess has been secretly training for combat since childhood, with her tutor Linh (Furie star Veronica Ngo) teaching her fighting skills instead of etiquette. Like Game of Thrones' Arya Stark, the princess longs to be a warrior rather than, well, a princess, even asking her father to make her a knight instead of marrying her off to Julius. He spurns her request, but of course, by the end of the movie, he'll come to appreciate her fighting prowess.
The audience will certainly appreciate it, too. The Princess starts strong with the opening scene, as the princess uses her handcuffs, her hairpins, and anything else she can find to dispatch the guards watching over her. It's a bit of a running joke that she tears more and more pieces of her ornate dress in each fight until she's finally able to don proper fighting gear. King easily holds her own in the numerous thrilling fight scenes, kicking adversaries out windows, setting them on fire, or repurposing her jewelry to knock them down -- and then delivering action-hero one-liners.
The tower becomes something like Ye Olde Nakatomi Plaza, with secret passageways, winding stairwells, and all manner of random items that can become weapons. Kiet makes strong use of what is clearly a limited budget, keeping the action mostly contained within the single location and finding creative ways to choreograph fight scenes in similar spaces. It's only in the occasional moments of the princess climbing or swinging on the outside of the tower that the shaky special effects let the movie down.
The princess eventually finds and rescues Linh so that the two of them can team up against Julius, and they also conveniently locate a John Wick-style hidden armory with all the weapons that they could need. Kiet gives his frequent collaborator Ngo a showcase of her own, and The Princess should open some action-movie doors for her as well. The Princess fits comfortably alongside recent female-led action movies like Gunpowder Milkshake and Kate while establishing its own unique identity. The end result is a gleeful genre mash-up that should satisfy fans of revisionist fairy tales and no-nonsense action B-movies in equal measure.
The Princess is now streaming on Hulu.