The very idea of Joey King: Action Star is ridiculous to the point you go into this movie expecting a satire. And, indeed, for a few minutes it felt like maybe it’s just that. But that’s not this movie, as it turns out. It’s instead trying to turn a former teen rom-com star into John Wick with a sword. And whether you can roll with a serious take on Die Hard in a Castle with Totes Adorbs Joey King in the John McClain role will determine whether this movie works for you. At all.

King plays a self-saving princess who wakes up to find her father’s castle overrun by soldiers. She has to escape the tower and take down as many baddies as she can on the way to saving her family. Using, of course, her years of undercover martial arts training and plenty of secret passages.

That part of me that loves fantasy epics, D&D, and ass-kicking female warriors is the part of me that wound up respecting this movie’s hustle. I’m probably rating it a little too high, but that old school one-person-vs-an-army part of me appreciated this flick, especially the longer it ran. Even if the effort isn’t always exactly A tier.

Yeah, Joey King does a credible job at playing an action hero…. not an amazing job, but c’mon, ANY kind of job she can muster is more than I expected. Sometimes you can tell she’s doing her own stunt work which was pretty eye-opening.

The action is aiming for The Raid levels of combat and kung-fu but falls short. This is probably more the B team of stunt and action choreography. But it’s better than I expected and can even throw in some inventive and bone-breaking sequences.

The film is reasonably violent but could have gone harder. It gets an R rating for a decent amount of blood and bone crushing but it almost feels a little curtailed. But it’s definitely not a PG rated princess flick… people are crushed, stabbed in the eye, sliced, diced, and decapitated with blood splattered across faces.

You’ll probably think I’m crazy and I might regret this review shortly. I’m giving this a slight notch higher than I was expecting and, indeed, the movie slowly kept creeping higher as it went along. My inner epic fantasy child was satisfied.

Score: 81