The Princess
       
Director: Le-Van Kiet
Year: 2022
Rating: 7.0
This is my kind of fairy tale. The prince leans down to kiss the sleeping beauty and she cuts his head off. I see a few people have compared this to the Raid but I have never seen that - so I was thinking John Wick except it's a girl with a sword who kills everyone. I mean everyone but the fat comedy relief guy. Killing him would have been cruel. Not sure if this is based on a video game - one of those where you have to work your way down through harder and harder levels to survive. It feels like it. Sure it is silly but no sillier than Princess Blade and a hundred other films when women half the size of the men wipe them out. That is the pleasure of these types of films. Plot? Ya, to kill everyone, get splattered by a lot of blood and save the Kingdom. Do we really need more? Directed by Vietnamese director Le-Van Kiet  who directed Furie starring the terrific Veronica Ngo, who has a big role here as well. This has echoes of Furie which may be why he got the job - in that one Ngo has her daughter stolen and has to kill everyone to get her back. Perhaps, I just like films with that theme. In a fair world, Ngo would be a big star - every time she enters into a scene it gets better just by her presence.

 

This is female empowerment, on both sides of the ledger. The Princess  (Joey King) kills everyone. Gutting, slicing and dicing, decapitating, hanging, crushing, dropping from heights, kicking in the balls, pots and pans. This is a girl who really doesn't want to get married. The bad guy (Dominic Cooper) and his magnificent evil whip wielding consort (Olga Kurylenko) want the marriage so that he can take over the Kingdom from her father. Little do they know that she has spent her life learning martial arts and sword skills from Veronica. They come in handy. It is unexpectedly violent and bloody. The scene where the Princess and Veronica take on an army of men is wonderful as they work their way through them. Good brainless fun. Nothing wrong with that on occasion.