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.

Unreal this movie is so bad in every aspects. I tried so hard to invest on the story but it's like the Hollywood tries so hard to represent diversity through its media. I found the characters in this movie boring and uninspired. There is no good chemistry and relationship between characters. I am so sorry to say this but i would not recommend it at all. Doesn't worth the time to watch this movie. Here's my question why these writers for this movie didn't care about actual history of Africa where they can tell the truth? Why they turned villains of this movie into heroes? As I said it's better to save your time watching something else than this movie.

The Woman King is one of those movies they make en masse these days - solid production, solid action, solid acting, boring story - and a running time that is far too long for the story provided. I would cut at least 30 minutes, maybe 45, and it would for sure improve the movie. These days it looks like it's all about quantity and not quality - thanks to cheap digital recording. Anyway, the story and characters never really draw me into the story and the combat scenes are average choreographed, nothing remarkable here. I really can't imagine that someone will remember this one in a few years. Verdict: just another mediocre affair.

When I went into this movie, I already knew very well the history surrounding the Agojie and the actions done by the African kingdom of Dahomey. But because I've almost always appreciated and liked the roles that Viola Davis chooses, I gave it a try.

After Viola Davis declarations about what it would mean if people didn't went to see the movie, a big part of me wanted nothing more than to not even see the movie. But I took her statements, as her making a huge mistake, that might hurt an actual good movie.

And as it turned out, I wouldn't have lost anything if I hadn't watched this movie.

From Viola Davis, to Lashana Lynch Izogie and others. The performances were for the most part solid, and the natural beauty of the African continent all helped to make the movie tolerable.

However try as they might, and they did try, history didn't happened that way. Not exactly. The Woman King gives you the Hollywood edited version of history, but it doesn't give you the actual history. The ugly side of the tribe that Nanisca (Davis) is portraying.

It's understandable why they did what they did, seeing the times they were living, and the movie should've owned that, instead of trying to embellish the truth. Anyone with an ounce of common sense would've understood, or at least tried to understand what was happening historically in that period of African history.

But apparently they are too ashamed to own to their own history. Maybe because the actresses and actors, didn't even bother to study the history of what they were going to be portraying.

The movie is not good, not really. It's watchable, not just because of the performances but also because of the beauty of the African continent, and also in part the culture as well. However they could've cut twenty minutes to the movie and you'd have lost nothing.

It has too many moments that are slow paced, and then it just puts in the fifth gear and doesn't slow down. To the viewer that doesn't know anything about what they're watching, they might be deceived into thinking they saw a a movie about female empowerment, and how to fight against oppression to preserve one's freedom. Because that's what the movie tries to sell.

And it's really because of the embellishment of a hard reality, that was the reality of those times, that I couldn't really appreciate this movie. It would be like applauding inaccuracy for the sake of creating a nice story, instead of owning the truth and show how many times sacrifices and hard choices need to be made.

I completely understand how some people might be more than willing to close their eyes to those things, but the dual standard isn't lost considering other historical movies were also a target of great scrutiny. And if memory fails you, then remember the criticism done about Kingdom of Heaven for not accurately portraying the Islamic side of history.

So if all other historical movies have been subjected to critic of their historical accuracy, then The Woman King doesn't get a free pass. At least not from me.

And then there's the story of the movie itself. Completely predicable from beginning to end, some of the dialogues were cringe as cringe can be, and some actresses like Viola Davis tried to sell their roles so hard that it came out as far over the top.

Twelve Years a Slave was a great movie, however The Woman King is not. It's watchable in a way that you can see it and pass the time, but without ever getting pulled into the story.

This movie will add nothing to the career of the actresses and actors in it. And it will add little to viewer, that spends the 135 minutes watching it.

And so there's no doubts, this movie lost me because a) the story wasn't good enough b) the story is too predictable c) some performances are just too over the top and d) the historical inaccuracy is unforgivable.