The Woman King

The Woman King (2022) is a movie my wife and I caught in theatres last night. The storyline follows an African kingdom with a new(er) king in 1823 who posses the only female army in Africa. The leader of the female Army has a past that haunts her but the respect of her king, enough to be on his council. She strongly urges him to avoid the slave trade and find alternative methods of riches. Meanwhile, those who do believe strongly in the slave trade look to march on the kingdom and bring them down. A new recruitment class to the female army brings brashness, new ideas to defend the kingdom, and the female leader's ghosts back to the forefront...

This movie is directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball) and stars Viola Davis (The Help), Thuso Mbedu (The Underground Railroad), Lashana Lynch (No Time to Die), Sheila Atim (Doctor Strange: In the Mouth of Madness), John Boyega (Star Wars: Episode VII-IV) and Jimmy Odukoya (Mamba's Diamond).

This movie has so much depth and contains a great primary plot and even better sub plots. The writing is remarkable, thorough and very impressive. The character's inner demons are well portrayed as is their struggle to overcome them. The acting is out of this world across the board. You feel for every character; and if anything happens to anyone, you feel personally hurt. The villains were also excellent as is the outcome of each of them. The settings and cinematography is outstanding and there is impressive use of lighting. The action scenes are remarkable and the fight choreography is award winning caliber. My only complaint is an awkward love story that is obviously in here to show maturity and self discovery but I could have done without it.

Overall, this movie has literally everything you'd want in a movie - tremendous action, great villains, self discovery and character triumph. I would strongly, strongly recommend seeing this movie and score it a 10/10. We loved it.

I did like : costumes were somewhat historically accurate which is nice.

Visuals are stunning.

Actors performance is decent.

I didn't like : historical inaccuracies which I as history geek couldn't turn a blind eye but if you are not familiar with history you may not notice it.

Somewhat vague story with no twists neither character development.

All characters paths and endings can be anticipated as it is obvious from start.

I didn't understood : why is the title Woman King ? She was Queen, why not use the proper title ?

Summary : plot is very vague. Movie is claiming to focus on rich history but in reality is pumping one action scene after another with very very vague, boring and poor written dialogues in between and totally sidelining the lesson in history which every high school history teacher would grade with D to F.

It is just another "watch and never return to" movie which I regret watching and I guarantee that majority of audience will not remember it in month or two.

All I can say is wow Hollywood, talk about choosing the narrative.

This tribe portrayed so brilliantly on screen were renowned slavers, kidnapping other africans and either selling them or keeping them for servitude.

How the movie studio could think that it was okay to turn a very dark chapter of history into some female empowerment story I've no idea yet the blind are falling for it as usual, do your research folks and you'll be shocked with the truth of this ruthless and merciless tribe of cruel characters fighting only to oppress their own kind, the glorification of this films side of events tries to over shadow and hide the truth.

It's odd with all it's patronising preaching that Hollywood are happy to glorify a character and story as long as the character is diverse.

The fact the Dahomey Tribe are the tribe that not only killed their brothers and sisters from neighbouring tribes for dominance ( normally broadcast as a white pursuit ) but also caged their people and sold them to the white slave traders, a fact omitted by " open-minded " kollywood.

Viola's character only became a leader as most of the men had been killed or sold by other communities to the slave trading fleet.

Viola Davis is a superbly diverse actress in terms or her movies and so varied characters. The fact she took this job with the tribe in questions' horrific humanitarian slaughter as well as selling tribesmen and women for goods, cigarettes and alcohol really shocks me. Only in this twisted world would humans who capture, cage and sell their kin be proclaimed as heroic figures and those who buy said humans be monsters.

I only watched 30 mins of this movie and have boycotted the rest in solidarity with victims and survivors of slavery past, present and sadly future.

( The stars are in respect of Viola Davi's and John Boyega )

It's a story that would be better told through an animated Disney film with an all-encompassing musical soundtrack (maybe it will one day), most performances are fine, although I thought Thuso Mbedu stole the limelight from Viola Davis who looked perpetually glum, while John Boyega added little and was unconvincing in his role. It's the kind of film you'd expect Janelle Monae to pop up in (but sadly she didn't). There are some good battle scenes, but there's little escalation and it doesn't really grab your attention and engage, although it did leave me reflecting once again how disgusting and disgraceful the history of this planet has been, and if a film can do that, then it's not a bad thing - which is what this is, not a bad thing, but not that good either.