FEMALE empowerment is the name of the game in The Princess, the new period-drama action film that made its debut on Disney+ Hotstar late last week.
Featuring Joey King as the titular Princess – the character’s actual name is never spoken – the film has some well-choreographed action scenes and thankfully decent performances, but suffers from clunky dialogue and cinematography that takes too much ‘inspiration’ from the works of Guy Ritchie and Matthew Vaughn.
We’re introduced to the Princess as she wakes up after being knocked out and imprisoned by some mercenaries. Within moments, we find out that she’s not your stereotypical damsel-in-distress as she singlehandedly kills them – in quite a brutal fashion – and escapes.
Eventually we learn that the palace has been invaded by a nobleman named Julius (Dominic Cooper), whom the Princess refused to marry. The rejected Julius, together with his army and paramour/second-in command Moira (Olga Kurylenko), decides to capture the royal family and force the Princess to marry him so that he can take over the kingdom.
Unbeknownst to almost everyone, the Princess has been taking swordfighting lessons on the side from one of her subjects, the warrior Linh (Veronica Ngo). It is now up to her to free everyone and get her revenge on Julius.
Despite starting out strong, the film’s flaws soon bog it down. For one thing, this is a film that knows it’s an ‘empowerment’ film, and it doesn’t let the audience forget it, which makes the entire effort come off as insincere and preachy.
In addition, the film feels as though it suffered from a limited budget. Most of the story takes place during a single day within the confines of the palace, and while that allowed for the focus to remain on the characters, it also made the film feel rather small and cheap.
Fortunately, the cast managed to do a good job with the weak material they were given. King in particular makes a believable ‘warrior princess’, and manages to pull off not just the fast-paced action scenes, but also a solid British accent.
Cooper also proves himself to be a decent antagonist, despite being saddled with cringe-inducing dialogue that would have turned a less competant actor into a one-dimensional villain.
One thing I noticed while watching The Princess was how similar the way the action scenes were shot looked to what we’ve seen previously in films like Kingsman and Sherlock Holmes. Whether it’s an homage or outright plagiarism, I suppose it is up to the viewer to decide. Comparisons have also been made to The Raid, and I have to concur.
I’m not sure how much of the film’s failures can be blamed on the director. Vietnam native Le-Van Kiet – who is making his Hollywood debut – has proven to be a competant filmmaker in the past, as seen in his 2019 action film Furie.
Incidentally, Furie starred Ngo, who is criminally underused in The Princess. The few scenes that she had with King were among the highlights of the film – especially once the two of them team up to fight the bad guys – and I wish that we could have seen more of those.
For one thing, it would have been more empowering to demonstrate how strong women can and should work together, instead of showing the Princess being forced to go at it alone most of the time.
Still, while The Princess is ultimately not a great film, it’s far from being a bad one, and the action scenes alone are worth sticking around for. I only wished that the film had lived up to what it promised.
Watch the trailer for The Princess below:
