Maggie Q is the first great female action star, and it’s about time we had one.

If you don’t believe me, watch “Fear the Night,” which is available through video on demand starting Friday, July 21. She is seriously good in this genre.

What do I mean by good? First, let me tell you what I don’t mean. I don’t mean good like Angelina Jolie in “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” (2001)or Jennifer Lawrence in “饥饿游戏” films. Nor do I mean auxiliary good, as in when a woman gets to be the second-most dangerous person on the screen, like Linda Hamilton in the “Terminator” movies.

Rather, I’m saying Maggie Q isLiam Neesongood. She has a defined action persona, and she can more than carry a movie on her own. She just needs the chance to prove it.

In “Fear the Night,” written and directed by the playwright and filmmaker Neil LaBute (“In the Company of Men”), Maggie Q gets a more than decent chance. The picture casts her in the Neeson mode, not as an overtly tough person, but as someone with a violent past, a veteran of the Afghanistan war.

As is often the case with Neeson’s characters, Maggie Q’s Tes is first presented as an underdog. Tes is an alcoholic just six months into sobriety who comes home to attend the bachelorette party of her younger sister, Rose (Highdee Kuan). Unfortunately for Tes, she finds that an older sister, Beth (Kat Foster) regards her with contempt and is determined to make her the odd woman out. Thus, as in the best action movies, Tes’s redemption will have to come through violence.

Early female action movies such as “Elektra,” the 2005 film that stars Jennifer Garner as the title assassin-for-hire, assumed that for a woman to be accepted as an action star, she practically had to become a robot. That was wrong. Rather, for an action movie to be enjoyable, the audience must believe they’re watching a real person who just happens to be unflappable amid peril. Her anger must be believable and justified, and the violence motivated by her mistreatment or some tangible higher cause.

In an early scene, Tes’s friends are getting verbally harassed by a trio of louts in a convenience store. She signals for the women to walk away and then talks to the men in a tone that lets them know she’s not afraid of them. When one asserts his macho bona fides, boasting that he was posted in Germany during his military service, she asks, “Are you one of the guys who changed my bedpan when I was medivacked there?”

There is something about Maggie Q — call it confidence or just good acting — that makes you believe she really was in the military, she was wounded, and, if necessary, she can beat up three guys in a convenience store.

The story of “Fear the Night” is straightforward and not all that original, but it’s well-made, and features Maggie Q at her best, and that’s what matters. The women go off to the middle of nowhere to have their party, and bad guys show up outside the house with bows and arrows and start picking them off. Unfortunately for the guys, this highly irritates Tes.

With Neeson, part of the fun has always been that he’s an older guy wreaking havoc. In a similar way, with Maggie Q, part of the fun is that it’s a slender, 5-foot-6 woman doing all this damage. When she tells a big guy wielding a knife, “I am going to kill you,” it’s both chilling and satisfying. There’s no doubting her.

The search for a female action star has gone on for at least two decades. Gina Carano in “Haywire” (2011) was promising, but nothing major followed. Michelle Rodriguez can be dangerous, but she’ll always be second to Vin Diesel in the “Fast and Furious” film franchise. Halle Berry bombed as“Catwoman” (2004), even though I kind of liked it, and年代carlett Johanssonwas awful in “Black Widow” (2021).

Then again, superhero actors really shouldn’t count as action stars. For example, as Wonder Woman, Gal Gadot can approach everything she does with ironic distance, because she doesn’t have to be tough. She knows she can’t lose. Action movies, by contrast, are not about superpowers. Rather, they’re predicated on the faith that righteous rage and strength of will can overcome any obstacle.

That’s a fairy tale, too, and there aren’t many people that can make you believe it’s true. But Maggie Q is one of them. She’s the female action star that the movies have been waiting for. Let’s hope Hollywood has the sense to realize it.

Reach Mick LaSalle: mlasalle@sfchronicle.com