द वुमन किंग

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.

There's a reason this movie wasn't a box office hit. It's not very good. Nor is it historically accurate. Yes there wasa prosperous kingdom of Dahomey and yes there was an army of females. That's it. The rest is all made up. All of it.

Thre was never a woman king. No idea who thought that was a good idea for a movie they try to pawn off as historical! Why not just make a fictional movie and say it's fiction?

Anyway, there are lots of familiar faces and others who are really bad actors.

But that's not the real problem. The problem with the movie is that it's not very good. The action scenes are fast and violent but then there are lulls in the action with people talking and talking and talking and the talking does absoutely nothing to further the plot. One of these lulls lasted a full tenty-five minutes.

It's all just filler until the next action scene.

You never care one bit about any of the characters. It's like a stuffed shirt. Nothing innside.

Poor execution. No character development. Villans are mostly just waiting to be executed.

The most interesting part of the movie is that it says it is based on historic events but it is not.

Dahomey tribe became powerful over a period of time by selling slaves. In the movie the tribe is fighting slave traders. May be they fight some slave traders and help others. The helping part is left out in the movie.

There are high profile actors in the movie but the script does not give them enough screen time to portray their best. But still we can see their acting brilliance in few scenes. I do not want to get in to details of the scenes.

When murderers, rapists and slave traders are presented as heroes and liberators, it is disgusting. It is disgusting to see how some directors and actors try to present evil with good. How something terrible is twisted to make it look beautiful. It is as if serial maniacs and murderers who killed hundreds of people in the most brutal ways would be made noble and just heroes. He killed 30 people, dismembered and ate them, oh no no, he was a hero who helps children with cancer. It's disgusting and I want to vomit from such cynicism! The acting is mediocre, even below average. And the appeals of the main characters to visit cinemas to watch this cynical lie. Strong female characters, heroes that the public should know about, good and honest people - all this will be on the screens someday, but not in this film!