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The Woman King Movie Review

The Woman King is a 2022 historical epic film directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood and starring Viola Davis and Thuso Mbedu. It is a very disappointing movie.

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“We are the spear of victory,

we are the blade of freedom,

we are Dahomey!“

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In the 1800s, a group of all-female warriors protects the African kingdom of Dahomey with skills and fierceness. Faced with a new threat, Gen. Nanisca trains the next generation of recruits to fight against a foreign enemy that’s determined to destroy their way of life. First off, I am all in favor of not only Hollywood bringing back the dead historical epic genre, but I am also fully supportive of focusing on other countries and continents and not just the US.

Also, the film clearly makes an effort to criticize the African role in slavery and how they themselves made deals with the Europeans to trade slaves for profit. I am not at all opposed to Hollywood movies making an attempt to portray a different culture in both the negative and the positive light. If only they would do such a thing with Muslim countries and Islam, but that is a whole other story.

The problems here are twofold – the overly populist approach to telling this story and the extreme historical inaccuracy on display. Speaking of the latter, Dahomey as it was portrayed here was not at all like the real-life county. Their crimes were extremely minimized and to focus on such a problematic nation and portray them in a mostly positive light is deeply troubling. Just reading a bit on your own about the history of this country will make you question why they even chose to make this film. I guess the all-female warrior hook was too difficult to pass.

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But no Hollywood epic is historically accurate, so that is the lesser of the two evils here. The worst offender is that populist blockbuster treatment of this story. There are some powerful statements being made not just on the role of Africa itself in slavery, but also on their complacency during these historical events. However, those conversations are few and far in-between as the majority of the film is devoted to overly extensive action sequences.

And the action is only solid as I wouldn’t call it exciting or truly memorable. The fight scenes needed to have been better if this movie wanted to be an epic action flick. This way, it was in a no man’s land between a historical epic and sort of an action movie, not succeeding fully in either of the two. The cinematography is also only serviceable and rare are moments where the film was truly epic in scope and look. It cannot be compared to the true Hollywood epics of yesteryear in that regard. The score, though, is pretty good as is the acting.

The Woman King is superbly acted and that it is one of its biggest strengths. Not only is Viola Davis perfectly cast as basically a kickass queen and she is effortlessly cool in the role, but the newcomer Thuso Mbedu is also terrific and hopefully she gets more roles off of this one. Most of the characters were well written and the added romance was solid too, but it needed more screen time to fully flourish.

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