La femme roi

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.

This movie is a complete reimagining of history.

Once again trying to convince people that history I somehow subjective. The tribe this movie is based on were slavery. They were not the heros or the victims. They murdered, enslaved, and sold other Africans at every chance they could get.

Not to mention that they lost a war where the other side took little to no casualties.

This movie belongs in the fantasy section since the only people who could possibly believe it was remotely true are living in a fantasy.

Stop trying to re-write history and gaslight everyone who appreciates history for what it is.

The accent was so bad They actually made it impossible for even Nigeria to understand I'm just so pained to see Nigerian History rewritten and reduced to jargons Couldn't they have at least looked for enough cast from Nigeria that actually have our accent And the eunuch part was annoying I didn't even see the reason why they were portrayed to be so feminine I couldn't even sit through the movie I had to leave I had high hopes for the movie But it was a mess in my opinion and all my friends think so too.

The cast couldn't even pronounce OYO like we do it It was just so embarrassing to watch Seeing my people history turned into something unwatchable Well I don't blame you I blame Nollywood for allowing this.

This is an insult on those people who were killed/enslaved, sold and used. History should not be rewritten and slavers should never be glorified! It completely baffles me how this movie is excused and celebrated by some people. (But I guess that's what happen when the education system fails people and children grow up learning their entire skillset from social media...)

Hollywood should have create a female empowerment movie about a different story, because this whole thing is just entirely infuriating.

I never would have imagine that one day I will see a movie come out about slavers being the good guys and somehow this should be about empowerment? What are you empowering? Betrayal? Slavery? The exploitation of people who are conquered, beaten, stolen from their homes? This is morally disgusting, no matter how well executed the movie is.