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.

It's not the first time that Hollywood makes a film set in a different culture while showing little respect for that culture or history. Think El Cid with Charlton Heston, Mulan or even Ben Hur. The difference is it is now the turn of African historic characters and events to be butchered. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with it. After all, artists should be able to take any story and reinterpret it as they see fit. The issue is when you position yourself as a hero for doing it. As if all Africans should be thankful that Hollywood finally decided to butcher one of their stories, and tell it the only way a valid movie can be made: the American way.

While the production design is admittedly strong, everything else is bland and poor, and insulting to African culture. From the costumes to the character motivations to the horrible lines, everything is reduced to a traditional American action movie, and not one of the best. Often times, you have the feeling of watching Mulan or Pocahontas, which are likely the filmmaker's primary film references. It's that bad.

With its unashamed cultural imperialism, The Woman King is a symptom of the worst our times have to offer.

Poorly acted and lacking continuity. While the action was reasonable the authenticity to actual events leaves much to be desired. Certainly there are many films whose script is flimsy, given the historical content, but the script itself must be believable.

Why must American produced films be so glossy and lacking in real world scenes. A movie based on 1800's Africa would not include evidence of highly sophisticated and polished palaces where everyone trains, dances, wines and dines in splendour.

Hollywood really needs to look at what is done in British period movies and series which are more realistic and authentic.

Unreal this movie is so bad in every aspects. I tried so hard to invest on the story but it's like the Hollywood tries so hard to represent diversity through its media. I found the characters in this movie boring and uninspired. There is no good chemistry and relationship between characters. I am so sorry to say this but i would not recommend it at all. Doesn't worth the time to watch this movie. Here's my question why these writers for this movie didn't care about actual history of Africa where they can tell the truth? Why they turned villains of this movie into heroes? As I said it's better to save your time watching something else than this movie.

First of all, this movie does not have any historic resemblance. The sad truth is that Dahomey tribe was actually slaved and also, they were part of the slavers that went on killing and capturing rest of the tribes. This movie is trying to sell the idea, that only white people were bad, but the history is telling us differently.

Movies should show the TRUTH, what ever that truth might be. Movies are there to teach us, so that history may never repeat it self!

By forcing falls truth on people, that will not change the past, but only confuse people more. Would not watch it, movie is nicely filmed but story line is crap.