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.

This is a historically unreliable movie. And the slavegrowers are exposed as good. The authors hide the name of the product, which the tribe sold, sold slaves to America. They make good people who ritually killed children, cut the throats of children, knitted other Africans and sold them as slaves to America. A pseudo-historical film, the Portuguese who were absent during this time period, and all the action shows a fictional world and actions. They are trying to impose a false story to show that white men are evil. Although this African country was bathed in blood and enslaved other African countries into slavery.

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.

When you look past the fact that the dohemy were responsible for slavery and were easily wiped out, and when I say easily wiped out, that's being kind, by French soldiers. That's likes making a movie about the confederate side in civil war and painting them in a positive while ignoring the whole slavery aspect. Not only did they lose in long range attacks, but also in hand to hand combat. So yeah, once you over look the inaccuracies, it's not a terrible film. Action in this film is great if you you don't understand simple physics or you over look it. The choreography is on par with great action films like John wick. Viola as always brings her A game. I just thought it was odd that she compared this film to a superhero film and already blaming people who don't see it, essentially hateful towards black women. Not worth the viewing in theaters just wait till it's available on streaming services.

Dahomey was a tribe in which enslaved surrounding tribes and sold/fueled the slave trade. This movie is a social justice project to fictionalize the past. We're there actual female warriors who defended the king? Yes. Did they perform well fighting the French? No. While it's not that cut and dry. The French had about 5,000 soldiers and the Dahomey had 10,000. The French had 85 deaths from battle and 205 from disease. The Dahomey had anywhere from 2,000-4,000 killed and 3,000 wounded. That's a 70% casualty rate. Not necessarily the fearsome domination depicted in this movie. Don't claim something based on true events when it's clearly not.