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.

Just came back from seeing The Woman King and, sadly, it's a disappointment: slow, corny, diffused. Instead of exploring the roots and formation of the Dahomey Amazons, it follows the cliched template of military recruit training film: bring together trainees from divergent backgrounds, always including one who is a born leader but arrogant and reckless. Their leader is a tough taskmaster, played by the glowering, no-nonsense Viola Davis. Add in some soap opera elements: dark secrets from the past and a forbidden romance. Add two subplots--about slave traders on the Coast and a royal skullduggery, and pour onto the screen. There ARE several good fight scenes. But for the rest, it may as well be Drill Sgt RIchard Widmark in Take the High Ground.an.

The Woman King sounds like a great movie on paper but fails to deliver big time.

The strength of the movie is it cast. Viola Davis and John Boyega are great well established actors who also look great as General and King respectively. Nawi (Thosu Mbedu) and Lashana Lynch (Izogie) were also both great. So, casting is on point.

The movie has good production design and wardrobe as well.

The movie falls flat on its face when it comes to it's Cinematography- there's nothing special about it- it's basic coverage, no cool telling of the story through great cinematography.

For an epic movie with war/battle scenes, the action scenes are very blah. No cool action set pieces or fight choreo at all.

Ultimately, I think the direction fails in telling this epic story. There is no sense of scale or no sense of how economically and morally draining to the local people the slave trade is. It is just lacking emotion. The strongest moment comes from Boyega's last speech. I think a different director could have done much better with the material of this film. It doesn't feel epic at all, when it really should feel epic and be epic.

This movie is a complete reimagining of history.

Once again trying to convince people that history I somehow subjective. The tribe this movie is based on were slavery. They were not the heros or the victims. They murdered, enslaved, and sold other Africans at every chance they could get.

Not to mention that they lost a war where the other side took little to no casualties.

This movie belongs in the fantasy section since the only people who could possibly believe it was remotely true are living in a fantasy.

Stop trying to re-write history and gaslight everyone who appreciates history for what it is.

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.