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 a story that would be better told through an animated Disney film with an all-encompassing musical soundtrack (maybe it will one day), most performances are fine, although I thought Thuso Mbedu stole the limelight from Viola Davis who looked perpetually glum, while John Boyega added little and was unconvincing in his role. It's the kind of film you'd expect Janelle Monae to pop up in (but sadly she didn't). There are some good battle scenes, but there's little escalation and it doesn't really grab your attention and engage, although it did leave me reflecting once again how disgusting and disgraceful the history of this planet has been, and if a film can do that, then it's not a bad thing - which is what this is, not a bad thing, but not that good either.

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.

So there are very few films nowadays that I actually get excited for, sure Top Gun lived up to and surpassed any expectations, so to say the least I was excited to see this film.

This start out pretty good sort of a little bit of a history lesson then goes into a really good fight scene . But then you realize this movie is really discombobulated with zero direction. I honestly think someone had an idea but couldn't think of how to conclude it - like most Stephen King novels.

It went from 1 scene to another and they never really connected. Almost like watching a B rated movie. I'm not sure who edited this but not good.

Sure there is some good acting, 2 fight scenes, but where is the music score?? There were time you had zero background music and it was weird.

Overall this movie is crap, honestly its not remotely good but for the 1st 10mins.

Would have loved the story if they told it more historically accurate. It's clear the writing is lazy and the reason is likely because they hired lazy people. Think about it.. they hired people to tell a story that already exists but they didn't want to tell the real story because that was too difficult so all they got were lazy writers. Learn the real story and you'll discover it's all lies. She was a slave holder herself - owned more slaves than most Americans. The writers went out of their way to not only ignore this fact but turn the movie into propaganda by suggesting she was anti-slave. So the movie is just a scheme.... don't watch it.