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 Woman King" is a historical drama film that tells the story of a powerful all-female warrior army in 18th century West Africa. Despite its intriguing premise and star-studded cast, the film fails to deliver a compelling and engaging story.

The pacing is slow and uneven, with long stretches of time where nothing seems to happen, followed by sudden bursts of violence and action that feel out of place and disconnected from the plot. The characters are one-dimensional and poorly developed, making it difficult to care about their struggles and motivations.

The dialogue is also clunky and unnatural, making it hard to follow the conversations and understand the characters' relationships with each other. Additionally, the film's attempts at exploring themes of gender and power are heavy-handed and lack nuance, reducing complex issues to simplistic and cliched stereotypes.

Even the production values, which are usually a strength of historical dramas, are disappointing. The sets and costumes are uninspired and lack authenticity, with a noticeable lack of attention to detail that takes viewers out of the story.

Overall, "The Woman King" is a lackluster and forgettable film that fails to live up to its potential. It's a shame, given the talented cast and fascinating subject matter, but the weak script and direction leave little to recommend. Save your time and skip this one.

It's not a bad film. It does mangle history beyond all belief.

The Dahomey didn't stop capturing, enslaving and selling captured fellow Africans because of a sudden attack of conscious. They did it because the British Royal Navy shut down all forms of trafficking in the Mediterranean and West coast of Africa from the early 19th century onwards. Dahomey, now Benin, ceased as a kingdom in 1904 as a direct result.

The film is weak in the first hour, but gets better in the second. Direction and script are poor, the fight sequences are heavily choreographed to the point of being quite laughable. Overall the production lacked a little grit and believability.

A female empowerment movie based on a real life tribe that conquered other tribes adn then enslaved the defeated and sold them to the Atlantic slave trade.

This movie attempts to water down or re-write history, as the Nanisca were fictional. While palm oil was looked at, it wasn't as lucrative as slave trading, so it never changed.

And the title is just stupid.

But, I do have to say the sets/costumes and background were well shot and looked authentic. The acting was decent as well, but the re-writing of history is a peeve of mine, so I can't in good conscience rate this movie very highly. Movie could benefit from editing and a shorter run time.

I didn't enjoy it and if I hadn't seen it for free, I'd not have seen it at all.

This movie is far from the historic facts. That just one of its problems. The acting was meh, and "the message" being forced in the movie is laughable. Look you should not change a whole tribe of people history just to gaslight people. So I blame the writers and the producers for this. We should go into a movie because we want to not because we are scared we might get cancelled. Has Hollywood learn yet to stop attacking movie goers. I guess not since they been doing same thing for decades. So my final thoughts on this movie? It was not good fictional and not based on facts movie. Don't waste your money.