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.

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.

The movie looks awesome and has great acting, love the scenes, but what I find difficult to reconcile was the insistence from this production in stating the movie is Historical, this movie is as historical as Glorious Bastards from Tarantino, the only difference is that Tarantino and crew were not going around insisting that this is what happened, as a fiction movie from it gets an 8th, so why the 3? Well gets a 3 because the production themselves insist that we qualify this movie as a historic piece, and in that matter it fails miserably plus I understand why the Afro-american community was shocked and insulted by Hollywood making a movie about the people who enslave them and went as far as to changing historic facts, so yes, it gets a 3 and will not recommend it if history facts are what you are looking for.

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.

I wish I hadn't spent my time seeing this because it was a complete waste of time. "YAAAS QUEEN" and "FWEEDOM" does not a good movie make. The scenes in this movie not only go against historical facts but also the tenets of movie composition and basic cinematography. I see reviews saying this movie is "very educational"; I would argue this claim would only hold merit if it was used as an example of how not to film a historical epic. The film makers and the stars of this film, predominantly Viola Davis, should be ashamed to have created such a failure of a film that is meant to be based on actual history. This movie is akin to defending slavery and I highly recommend you do not watch this film, as I unfortunately had the displeasure of doing. Not entertaining and not educational at all.