New Barely Lethal Trailer with Hailee Steinfeld vs. Sophie Turner

It seems in the days after Kick-Ass and Hanna that adolescent superheroines are so prevalent that there needs to be a school for them. And so there is in the new film Barely Lethal.

In the new action-comedy that looks like it is targeting wildly differing audiences with its martial arts throwdowns and high school clique shindigs, Barely Lethal gets young talent Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) and Sophie Turner (Game of Thrones) to lock horns with an older generation of action stars that include Jessica Alba (Sin City), and the invaluable Samuel L. Jackson (everything).

In the film Steinfeld plays Megan, a super-duper young assassin that just wants a normal life. So when the opportunity arises, she fakes her own death and reinvents herself as a suburban high schooler. But faster than you can say Hit-Girl, she is having difficulty fitting in. It only gets worse when her arch-nemesis (Alba) escapes custody to enlist Heather (Turner) to also go undercover in the high school and bring Megan down. Jackson meanwhile will appear as Megan’s handler and presumably Nicolas Cage styled mentor.

Honestly, there could be an intriguing idea here about the meta-standards of young women, as not so long ago Ms. Alba was the ingénue starring in action roles on television and film. There could be something quite sophisticated to say about that now that she is very much a woman, she is the villain for the next era of starlets.

But Barely Lethal does not appear to be going that direction at all. Instead, enjoy watching young girls kick the crap out of each other in prom dresses.

Barely Lethal debuts on DirectTV on April 30, but will not be in limited release and wider OnDemand platforms until May 29, 2015.