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.

This movie makes no sense. The furore around it lead to me research the Dahomey origins on top of watching it. I normally don't mind minor revisions of historical tales if the acting and cohesion can pull through, but once again Hollywood seems to have fallen flat on its face with a rather bizarre take on what seems like the most dubious tribe for enabling slavery and one, that was obliterated time and time again. I'd rather not spoiler it and perhaps suggest you watch it if you want to compare reality but the wholesale value of this movie is action over substance. The fight scenes are good, I'll give it that, but I've personally never liked John Boyega, especially after Star Wars but that's another story. Viola I quite like and I think she probably held this one together, despite being close (but not quite) to an action packed disaster. It's one of those films that had it been more accurate, it wouldn't have been made, but to me it felt like they relied on the action to carry a poorly written revision, so as I say, it makes no sense, just like the title from a comprehension point of view.

I stayed to the end but I wouldn't watch it again. I think if you want to see the action on big screen it's worth a punt otherwise give it a miss.

I wish I hadn't spent my time seeing this because it was a complete waste of time. "YAAAS QUEEN" and "FWEEDOM" does not a good movie make. The scenes in this movie not only go against historical facts but also the tenets of movie composition and basic cinematography. I see reviews saying this movie is "very educational"; I would argue this claim would only hold merit if it was used as an example of how not to film a historical epic. The film makers and the stars of this film, predominantly Viola Davis, should be ashamed to have created such a failure of a film that is meant to be based on actual history. This movie is akin to defending slavery and I highly recommend you do not watch this film, as I unfortunately had the displeasure of doing. Not entertaining and not educational at all.

Dahomey was a tribe in which enslaved surrounding tribes and sold/fueled the slave trade. This movie is a social justice project to fictionalize the past. We're there actual female warriors who defended the king? Yes. Did they perform well fighting the French? No. While it's not that cut and dry. The French had about 5,000 soldiers and the Dahomey had 10,000. The French had 85 deaths from battle and 205 from disease. The Dahomey had anywhere from 2,000-4,000 killed and 3,000 wounded. That's a 70% casualty rate. Not necessarily the fearsome domination depicted in this movie. Don't claim something based on true events when it's clearly not.