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 is rewriting the history in a very untrue and manipulative way. The Dahomi weren't so "flower power" as this movie wants to portray them.

They were actually the ones selling African slaves and being the bad guys of the story.

They are responsible for the 20% of the African slavery worldwide.

Fun fact the original casting for the protagonist quit the movie after traveling to Africa and learning from locals about the crimes of the Dahomi.

Such a shame though. The actors is this movie are so good and so pleasant to watch. The story is very appealing and overall very good.

But unfortunately it's not based at all on true events.

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.

It's odd with all it's patronising preaching that Hollywood are happy to glorify a character and story as long as the character is diverse.

The fact the Dahomey Tribe are the tribe that not only killed their brothers and sisters from neighbouring tribes for dominance ( normally broadcast as a white pursuit ) but also caged their people and sold them to the white slave traders, a fact omitted by " open-minded " kollywood.

Viola's character only became a leader as most of the men had been killed or sold by other communities to the slave trading fleet.

Viola Davis is a superbly diverse actress in terms or her movies and so varied characters. The fact she took this job with the tribe in questions' horrific humanitarian slaughter as well as selling tribesmen and women for goods, cigarettes and alcohol really shocks me. Only in this twisted world would humans who capture, cage and sell their kin be proclaimed as heroic figures and those who buy said humans be monsters.

I only watched 30 mins of this movie and have boycotted the rest in solidarity with victims and survivors of slavery past, present and sadly future.

( The stars are in respect of Viola Davi's and John Boyega )

Damn, it's hard to diss a movie that so much work went into, and where so many great performances were offered.

But the disgusting way that the writers have turned villains into heroes and sold a fake history lesson to the public cannot be overlooked.

This country was a despicable, slave-owning, slave-trading, totalitarian regime and its Amazon army, composed of girls who were themselves enslaved as children, were how the country captured its slaves.

Viola Davis is great as the fictional character she plays and the whole thing looks spectacular but none of this matters a damn because its all a cash-grabbing lie.