Killer performance in Hulu’s ‘The Princess’
Most of “The Princess” consists of Joey King beating up people. This is an actress who is around 5-foot-3 — and that’s on a warm day — while her adversaries are much taller and not in her weight division. These are big guys, often wearing armor and invariably carrying swords.
Somehow this doesn’t seem ridiculous, so “The Princess” passes that test. The fight choreographer, Kefi Abrikh — and make no mistake, in this movie the fight choreographer is at least as important as the director — creates scenes of mortal combat that make you believe King would do just fine against Mike Tyson. With Abrikh’s help, King doesn’t just do this two or three times. She does this about 100 times, and the fights are all different.
King deserves some credit, too: She is at home taking punches in this seriously physical role. In the movie’s first moments, her hands are in chains and she’s locked in a tower. Some disgusting-looking guard hovers over her as she pretends to sleep, and she headbutts him. She’s just getting warmed up.
“The Princess” then passes the second test: Not only do we believe these fights, but it gradually starts to seem cool that this princess is such a badass. Part of your mind will never completely buy it, but to the extent that you do, you may find the spectacle bracing — especially, as you start to think about how things actually would have gone for a provincial princess in the Middle Ages.
The movie takes place a long time ago, in a kingdom that is totally falling apart. The princess looks down from the tower and sees that her father and mother, the king and queen, are being held captive by a usurping lord named Julius (Dominic Cooper). His plan is to marry the princess in a forced ceremony, become the de facto heir to the throne and then kill the king.
His murderous ambition presents the princess with a seemingly impossible task. She has to avoid recapture,save her parents and restore the kingdom. Basically, that means killing about 100 people, including Julius, who is smart, paranoid and hardly a pushover.
King is not just fun in the fight scenes. She has a great moment when she describes to Julius what their marriage would be like. Coolly and in detail, she explains how every moment of every day, she will be waiting to kill him. She goes on to say that she won’t rest until his “still beating” heart is in her hands. So right off you know it will not be a conventional wedding night.
King is a blast, with the fierce intensity of French actress Sara Forestier, whom she strongly resembles. And this movie is worthy of King’s exertions. “The Princess” is not the kind of effort that gets much respect, but if you want to respect it, do this little exercise: Get a pen and a piece of paper. Write down “Princess in a tower has to kill everybody.” Then figure out how to make that interesting for more than 10 minutes.
Director Le-Van Kiet and screenwriters Ben Lustig and Jake Thornton succeed by making the action look real, by coming up with intriguing plot twists and keeping our heroine in danger at all times. Twice she even hangs from a banner outside the tower. Clearly, this young lady has the leadership gene. The princess should be running her country.