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.

The Dahomey in real life fueled the slave trade and got smacked the two battles they fought against the French. This movie tries to make the Dahomey heroes fighting against slavery even though they had slave of their own.

In real life the Dahomey barely killed any of the French and instead only raided other smaller tribes to steal women and children in order to sell them into slavery or keep them to work as slaves on their own plantation.

Imagine a movie where the confederacy fought to free slave a from the Union. Sounds crazy right? That is what this movie does takes a group like the Nazis and tries to make them hero's.

This movie is far from the historic facts. That just one of its problems. The acting was meh, and "the message" being forced in the movie is laughable. Look you should not change a whole tribe of people history just to gaslight people. So I blame the writers and the producers for this. We should go into a movie because we want to not because we are scared we might get cancelled. Has Hollywood learn yet to stop attacking movie goers. I guess not since they been doing same thing for decades. So my final thoughts on this movie? It was not good fictional and not based on facts movie. Don't waste your money.

Despite the blatant "all black female cast" gimmick the movie showed great potential, and it is different from we usually see in modern action movies. Men in tights and cape, that is. I'd take female savage warriors all day.

But we know by now that in this age we can't have a complete, layered movie. It is simply impossible, cause everything must be watered down, dumbed down and politically innocuous. And that's the movie we got here: the interesting cultural aspects are not enough developed, the geopolitical situation is as thin as possible (and I'm not talking about realism, that is for documentaries, I'm talking about any kind of interesting political reality), and despite the truly great acting, the characters are as rhetorical and melodramatic as in any Superhero movie. And the worst sin of all: an action movie with below average action. Yeah, everything is treated with epicness; but so are Michael Bay movies. The epicness is shallow, there is no complexity, except violence and gore, and directing is confusing. In few words, the trailers are better. Again, like a Superhero movie.

So yeah, this film will be successful because, honestly, not only his premise is as gimmicky as possible, but for once it is actually interesting. But just like the majority of modern action movies, it is all captivating epic surface with no technical or narrative substance. And I'm personally tired of this.

Just came back from seeing The Woman King and, sadly, it's a disappointment: slow, corny, diffused. Instead of exploring the roots and formation of the Dahomey Amazons, it follows the cliched template of military recruit training film: bring together trainees from divergent backgrounds, always including one who is a born leader but arrogant and reckless. Their leader is a tough taskmaster, played by the glowering, no-nonsense Viola Davis. Add in some soap opera elements: dark secrets from the past and a forbidden romance. Add two subplots--about slave traders on the Coast and a royal skullduggery, and pour onto the screen. There ARE several good fight scenes. But for the rest, it may as well be Drill Sgt RIchard Widmark in Take the High Ground.an.