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.

Terrible movie. Bad acting. There are much better movies to watch. Story line is typical. Could have made this movie better, but they choose a certain message and certain actors and actresses. In the world of action movies and heroes, this one didn't make the grade. Directing was OK and the cinematography wasn't too bad either. But the whole story line and premise of the movie has been done before and isn't interesting. I'm sure there are people that will find it interesting and entertaining, just wasn't me or the 3 others that watched it with me. I certainly hope they don't do a second one.. cause I won't watch it.

This film is complete propaganda, and tries to rewrite history in a dangerous way. It's about the Oyo tribe, historically one of the largest suppliers of slaves for the slave trade. The king it follows - king Ghezo - is portrayed as wise and fair, but historically he was a cruel and ruthless king. He was even nicknamed "the slaver king" in his time. This guy had a harem of hundreds of slave women, including one whose sole job was to kneel in front of him holding a golden chalice for him to spit into. From here, the historical butchery gets worse.

The unit of women the film follows - the Agojie - did actually exist. They were formed by the king in response to a rival king demanding tribute in the form of female slaves. Once formed, their job was to round up women to enslave and gift to this rival king. The Agojie were literally formed to enslave women.

The Woman King is a perfect example of Hollywood being reckless with history in order to capitalize on social trends and make a profit. Because of the threat of enslavement, name "Agojie" would have been terrifying to any African woman living in Western Africa in the mid-late 1800s. Now Hollywood has decided to rewrite history to glorify these people so they can make a quick buck. This is the equivalent of making a film about the Nazi S. S. in which it's rewritten to make them the heroes trying to save Jews. If anything deserves to be canceled, it's this film.

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.

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.