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 movie looks awesome and has great acting, love the scenes, but what I find difficult to reconcile was the insistence from this production in stating the movie is Historical, this movie is as historical as Glorious Bastards from Tarantino, the only difference is that Tarantino and crew were not going around insisting that this is what happened, as a fiction movie from it gets an 8th, so why the 3? Well gets a 3 because the production themselves insist that we qualify this movie as a historic piece, and in that matter it fails miserably plus I understand why the Afro-american community was shocked and insulted by Hollywood making a movie about the people who enslave them and went as far as to changing historic facts, so yes, it gets a 3 and will not recommend it if history facts are what you are looking for.

It's not a bad film. It does mangle history beyond all belief.

The Dahomey didn't stop capturing, enslaving and selling captured fellow Africans because of a sudden attack of conscious. They did it because the British Royal Navy shut down all forms of trafficking in the Mediterranean and West coast of Africa from the early 19th century onwards. Dahomey, now Benin, ceased as a kingdom in 1904 as a direct result.

The film is weak in the first hour, but gets better in the second. Direction and script are poor, the fight sequences are heavily choreographed to the point of being quite laughable. Overall the production lacked a little grit and believability.

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.

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.