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 an insult on those people who were killed/enslaved, sold and used. History should not be rewritten and slavers should never be glorified! It completely baffles me how this movie is excused and celebrated by some people. (But I guess that's what happen when the education system fails people and children grow up learning their entire skillset from social media...)

Hollywood should have create a female empowerment movie about a different story, because this whole thing is just entirely infuriating.

I never would have imagine that one day I will see a movie come out about slavers being the good guys and somehow this should be about empowerment? What are you empowering? Betrayal? Slavery? The exploitation of people who are conquered, beaten, stolen from their homes? This is morally disgusting, no matter how well executed the movie is.

Despite the blatant "all black female cast" gimmick the movie showed great potential, and it is different from we usually see in modern action movies. Men in tights and cape, that is. I'd take female savage warriors all day.

But we know by now that in this age we can't have a complete, layered movie. It is simply impossible, cause everything must be watered down, dumbed down and politically innocuous. And that's the movie we got here: the interesting cultural aspects are not enough developed, the geopolitical situation is as thin as possible (and I'm not talking about realism, that is for documentaries, I'm talking about any kind of interesting political reality), and despite the truly great acting, the characters are as rhetorical and melodramatic as in any Superhero movie. And the worst sin of all: an action movie with below average action. Yeah, everything is treated with epicness; but so are Michael Bay movies. The epicness is shallow, there is no complexity, except violence and gore, and directing is confusing. In few words, the trailers are better. Again, like a Superhero movie.

So yeah, this film will be successful because, honestly, not only his premise is as gimmicky as possible, but for once it is actually interesting. But just like the majority of modern action movies, it is all captivating epic surface with no technical or narrative substance. And I'm personally tired of this.

All I can say is wow Hollywood, talk about choosing the narrative.

This tribe portrayed so brilliantly on screen were renowned slavers, kidnapping other africans and either selling them or keeping them for servitude.

How the movie studio could think that it was okay to turn a very dark chapter of history into some female empowerment story I've no idea yet the blind are falling for it as usual, do your research folks and you'll be shocked with the truth of this ruthless and merciless tribe of cruel characters fighting only to oppress their own kind, the glorification of this films side of events tries to over shadow and hide the truth.

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.