A Mulher Rei

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 Agojie warriors played a significant role in Ghezo's campaign for expansion through the export of African slaves. Plus the movie was terrible. Bad acting. Bad story. Boring based off a bunch of lies."How accurate is The Woman King?" we learned that in real life, the Dahomey are much more the villains than the heroes. The Kingdom of Dahomey was a bloodthirsty society bent on conquest. It was customary for the Dahomey to return home with the rotting heads and genitals of those they killed in battle. They conquered neighboring African states and took their citizens as slaves, selling many in the Atlantic slave trade in exchange for items like rifles, tobacco, and alcohol. Many of the slaves they sold ended up in America. They also kept some slaves for themselves to work on royal plantations. The business of slavery is what brought Dahomey most of its wealth. For them, it very much came down to either enslave others or become enslaved yourself.

This film is complete propaganda, and tries to rewrite history in a dangerous way. It's about the Oyo tribe, historically one of the largest suppliers of slaves for the slave trade. The king it follows - king Ghezo - is portrayed as wise and fair, but historically he was a cruel and ruthless king. He was even nicknamed "the slaver king" in his time. This guy had a harem of hundreds of slave women, including one whose sole job was to kneel in front of him holding a golden chalice for him to spit into. From here, the historical butchery gets worse.

The unit of women the film follows - the Agojie - did actually exist. They were formed by the king in response to a rival king demanding tribute in the form of female slaves. Once formed, their job was to round up women to enslave and gift to this rival king. The Agojie were literally formed to enslave women.

The Woman King is a perfect example of Hollywood being reckless with history in order to capitalize on social trends and make a profit. Because of the threat of enslavement, name "Agojie" would have been terrifying to any African woman living in Western Africa in the mid-late 1800s. Now Hollywood has decided to rewrite history to glorify these people so they can make a quick buck. This is the equivalent of making a film about the Nazi S. S. in which it's rewritten to make them the heroes trying to save Jews. If anything deserves to be canceled, it's this film.

Stripped of any context, this movie is decent if rather boring and formulaic action epic that's light on the action. Maybe 5 or 6 out of 10. But this movie isn't presented without context: it purports to dramatize a real group of people in a real historical setting. As such it has to have some connection with reality or the immersion will be broken. (And it only has to be a tenuous connection with historical reality to be enjoyable (e.g. Gladiator and Braveheart.)) The Woman King flies completely off the rails into cloud cuckoo land, characterizing the enforcement arm of one of the worst societies of its era (chattel bondage, human sacrifice, reproductive mutilation) as admirable and heroic. It's as goofy, ill-judged and nauseating as if Hollywood presented the homicidal lunatics running around Munich in black shirts circa 1939 as noble warriors who liberated Warsaw.

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.