The Princess  ★★★

The Princess is an odd little action/comedy.

It’s set in a mythical medieval kingdom and stars Joey King as a princess refusing to marry the powerful suitor who has been chosen for her.

The princess – we never know her by any other name – has been confined to a room at the top of the family castle while the cruel Julius, whose forces are now occupying the building, awaits her inevitable change of mind.

That set-up is about as close to a typical fairy tale as this film gets.

A couple of guards enter her room to find her trying to escape. The ensuing fight sees The Princess victorious with two dead bodies at her feet.

She then proceeds to make her way down the castle stairs, having a series of sword and fist fights with increasing hordes of her would-be suitor’s men.

As her battle progresses we get a series of flashbacks that show how she was secretly trained by one of the King’s staff to be a warrior.

Lingerie, played with equal gusto by Veronica Ngo, eventually enters the fray to help battle Julius’s whip-wielding henchwoman Moira.

Vietnamese director Le-van Kiet previously made a well-regarded crime thriller called Furie which is still his country’s biggest box-office hit.

The Princess has gone straight to streaming services so isn’t in the same league.

It’s tightly-edited and decently-acted with some good fight sequences.

But even the relatively short running time doesn’t disguise some of the repetition involved.

A good watch but it’s going to struggle to find a defined audience as it’s too violent for general audiences