The Princess turns a familiar fairy-tale trope into a satisfying, indulgent kick-ass fantasy

polygon.com:

Fairy-tale conventions dictate that a princess in distress will likely get rescued by a dashing man — except in more modern cases, where she might instead smack the man she once wanted to marry, get rescued by an ogre, start a fashion empire, or any of the many contemporary iterations that subvert the damsel-in-distress trope.

The live-action martial arts movie The Princess could easily just be another story about one more headstrong princess who doesn’t want to wait around to be rescued. Its fairy-tale tropes could make it look like a Disney film from a distance — and the fact that Disney acquired it, and is releasing it on Disney Plus outside the U.S., doesn’t dispel that impression. But it’s actually a 20th Century Studios title, an R-rated killer-combat film that lets the unnamed princess at its center do serious, bloody damage. From action director Le-Van Kiet, The Princess plays into well-worn genre subversions, but actually sees those subversions through for a satisfying effect.

[Ed. note: This review contains some slight setup spoilers for The Princess.]

The Princess kicks off with the titular princess (Joey King) waking up handcuffed at the top of a tall tower, where she immediately takes out her guards. A series of flashbacks reveal that she was supposed to enter an arranged marriage, but left her would-be groom, Julius (Dominic Cooper, a recurring MCU player as Tony Stark’s father, Howard), at the altar. As revenge, Julius captured the royal family and locked the princess in the tower to force her to marry him so he can take over the throne. But he doesn’t realize the princess has trained in hand-to-hand combat since early childhood. With her family being held at sword-point, it’s up to the princess to fight