King acclimates nicely to the action genre as the title heroine who has to fight for her and her family's freedom after she's locked away in a tower by the vengeful wannabe tyrant (Cooper) who her father (Ed Stoppard) arranged for her to marry and succeed him as the ruler of whatever unknown kingdom he presides over. Director Le-Van Keit's (Furie, this year's widely torched VOD shark movie The Requin) have a scrappy energy to them that suits its down-and-dirty style well and King proves she has a future in this space if she wants to pursue it by committing to the intricate fight choreography and seemingly having a good time kicking people's asses on screen.
If Keit didn't insist on constantly cutting back to dull dramatic scenes featuring Cooper plotting to kill the royal family for embarrassing him during and flashbacks of The Princess calling her dad an asshole for not believing she could run the kingdom herself, it could've easily matched the gritty fury of one of Adkins' Undisputed sequels or his more recent standout Avengement. But since The Princess grinds its momentum to a halt after nearly every sequence of King (and sometimes with the aid of Ngo-who plays her mentor) using her wits and extensive combat/weapons training to dispatch legions of admirable fighters, the movie never builds up the breakneck level of energy it needed to fulfill its goal of being the gender-flipped medieval version of The Raid. With that being said, 2022 has been a huge action movie desert to date and I'm willing to embrace anything that displays competence in the execution of its actual action at this stage of the calendar.
Grade: B-
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