The Woman King (2022)

 

Genre: Action/ Drama

Time: 2h 15mins

Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood

Quick Summary: A historical epic inspired by true events that took place in The Kingdom of Dahomey, one of the most powerful states of Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries.

For a start, the story is engaging and the plot progression isn't bad. But something just felt missing.

A lot of the side characters stood out way more than the main character, which I found annoying and every time she spoke I wanted her to just stop. To me the focus was more on the side characters, they felt more fleshed out, but then they constantly change how the characters are. One in particular who is supposed to be closed off, suddenly becomes very open and nice before snapping shut seconds after.

Pretty much all of the fight scenes are so poor in how they're shot and edited. All the shots consist of our heroes swinging at someone off-screen or so visibly far away from them that it's super clear these fight scenes were not choreographed properly. 

But, I do have to say the sets/costumes and background were well-shot and looked authentic. The acting was decent as well, they were just given a poor script and story to work with. Instead of telling a straightforward story about fighting back against slavers which was actually in this context of the Dahomey tribe, incredibly inaccurate. For a film claiming to be historically accurate, you'd think they'd actually stick to history.

For some reason, the movie decides to add plot threads, including an underwritten and unbelievable romance, that I honestly did not care about. It was incredibly forced. Aside from the action scenes, everything else felt like it was just filling up time before the next poorly made action scene.

This isn't really worth your time, overall very bland and boring.

3/10