The Woman King
Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood.
Written by Dana Stevens.
Somewhere in a Marvel Studios board room, Kevin Feige is throwing his hat in anger at the fact that he didn’t pull the trigger on a Dora Milaje movie. Because then he’d have the badass female warrior movie without the #boycott drama. But this ain’t about the dope movie we could have gotten, this is about the dope movie we did get.
The Woman King is the story of the Agojie, the warrior women who fight for King John Boyega and the rest of the Dahomey Kingdom. Their leader is Nanisca, the player-coach of this team that is the powerhouse but also the underdogs. I’ll explain that later. But this isn’t just Nanisca’s story, it’s also Nawi’s. Nawi is the headstrong rookie sensation who clashes with the coach/captain. I WILL EXPLAIN THE SPORTS METAPHORS LATER.
Also, there are fairly justifiable concerns being raised online in regards to the fact that the Dahomey sold other Africans into slavery and that’s how they maintained their wealth. In the movie, they stop this because Nanisca doesn’t like it, and you don’t say no to Viola Davis. In real life, however, they didn’t stop selling slaves until they were forced to. So, that’s not great. The Dahomey were not, in fact, da homies. So naturally, that led to #BoycottTheWomanKing on Twitter because if there’s one thing Twitter’s good for, it’s starting a boycott hashtag.
According to my extensive research (skimming the Wikipedia page for the movie), “Maria Bello conceived the idea for The Woman King in 2015 after visiting Benin, where Dahomey used to be located, and learning the history of the Agojie. Convinced she had found a story worth telling, she recruited Cathy Schulman to develop it into a feature film. They pitched it to several studios, who turned it down due to financial concerns”. No word on whether or not Maria came across the glaring issue of the Dahomey holding onto slavery like Americans hold onto guns. But let me tell ya, Twitter does NOT like the fact that White women conceived this movie’s story. Personally, I think they could have avoided all of this by just NOT using the names Dahomey and Agojie. Make up names, and say it’s based on true events if you want, but now your heroes aren’t a bunch of slavers. Easy peasy.
Now that I’ve addressed the trouble, let’s get back to the movie at hand. This cast is so fire. All these women (and John Boyega) are phenomenal. Viola Davis continues to show off why she’s one of the most respected actresses in the game, and she’s shredded like a julienne salad. Sheila Atim’s Amenza and Lashana Lynch’s Izogie play two different sides of the mentor coin. Amenza is Nanisca’s right hand, and Sheila Atim brings the perfect amount of warmth and caring to that role, while also being believable as someone who can and will rip a man’s head clean off. Izogie is the cooler older sister type of character that it’s impossible not to fall in love with, due in large part to Lashana’s charm. You can’t have a big sister type without a little sister, and that’s where Nawi comes in. Nawi is the main character that we follow as a young recruit, and Thuso Mbedu plays the hell out of this role. Nawi is confident, hardheaded, and easy to root for, and this is a star-making performance for Thuso.
There’s also John Boyega as King Ghezo. This isn’t really his story, but John Boyega ain’t bout to come on screen and not show out. He makes every scene count and commands the respect that a king should. According to his interview with The Breakfast Club, this was his favorite role, and I see why.
An interesting thing about this movie is that it checks boxes for a few different genres. First of all, it’s a war movie, right? It’s got action-packed battle scenes, somber moments dealing with loss, a whole lot of emotional development to make us care for the character(s) that we’ll have to watch die later, all that. It’s more like a War for the Planet of the Apes type of war movie though. I expected to just watch Viola catch bodies for two hours, but there isn’t as much fighting as I expected. The other scenes worked very well though, so I can’t say I’m disappointed.
Next up, it’s kind of a slavery movie for a bit. I know, I know. I don’t like that either. I generally don’t watch slavery movies, because why would I do that to myself? Given all the backstory and controversy I mentioned earlier, I guess it’s not surprising that this movie showed people on the auction block, but guess who didn’t know about ANY of that going in? So yeah, I didn’t expect the lady who made Love & Basketball to make me watch slave auctions.
Remember when I said I’d explain the sports metaphors earlier? This is kind of a sports movie! Only in formula though. Nawi is a part of the new group of recruits, and they fill the role of the rag-tag team that has to be brought together and taught discipline (the Remember the Titans kids before racism is fixed, the hoodrat kids from Gridiron Gang, the not yet Mighty Ducks from The Mighty Ducks, etc.). Nanisca is the hardened coach who has molded many champions in her time and has no patience for nonsense (Coach Boone, Coach Carter, whatever The Rock’s name is in Gridiron Gang (I wanna say Sean Porter), etc.). The interesting thing is that the Agojie are already revered and legendary when the movie starts, but they have a larger enemy so they play both the powerhouse and underdog roles, as I said earlier. Also, this next one is not a sports movie but the dynamic between Nanisca and Nawi has some STRONG parallels to Nick Cannon and what’s his name from Drumline. You know what’s his name. The dude who was hatin’ on Nick Cannon the whole time, but then stopped.
I say all this to say the movie is good at every kind of movie it is, and I love sports movies, so I really enjoyed all the sports movie tropes (lots of practices, bonding moments between teammates, jogging in a straight line, etc.).
I think this movie review has gotten away from me a bit. I try to keep these from being too long, since people don’t even read reviews anymore to my knowledge. Maybe I got too into the Twitter controversy and sports movie parallels. Oh well, I can cut it here. Oh, wait! One more thing! The visuals!
This movie looks great. The fight choreography is on point, the beautiful Black skin of everyone is shinin’ and glistenin’ in a lovely way, and Jayme Lawson was strikingly stunning every time she came on screen.
So that’s The Woman King. It’s as good as the critics’ reviews are saying, and it’s a great way to see some Black people being excellent. We love to see it. I recommend it if you like war movies, sports movies, and/or strong Black women.
Tl;dr: Pretty much everything is on point, depending on how much extratextual context affects your opinion of movies.
Rating: 8.5 out of 10
P.S.:
The MPA rating system is so many types of stupid. Someone kicks over a bucket of severed heads in this movie, but it’s PG-13 because there are no titties and not too much blood.
I just had to say that here before I left.
Straight Outta Pride Rock 