My Review of "Woman King"

Woman King comes out recently to a not too stellar fall lineup in 2022. I haven't had a huge itch to go to the cinemas in a while but that's mainly because I'm not huge into horror movies. Otherwise I'd be all over it. This was probably the most enticing movie for me to watch for September. I didn't even get to watch it until October!

The movie starts off with a narration crawl. I found they could have explained this part through montages or through the opening credits. You have to give it to them for trying to make it more epic with the crawl though. We then get introduced to the mighty Dahomey warriors.

They're a group of elite African female warriors led by Nanisca. She's the head of their armed force unit. Basically everyone is loyal to the king and the king's warriors. It's nice because these warriors are made up of individuals that have been cast aside. They're either people that weren't wanted or even prisoners from other tribes.

The king that they serve is King Ghezo. He's a proud king but fair and logical in thinking. His kingdom has been under attack from another bigger tribe. They're constantly harassing him for more tributes. At the time the biggest tributes were human slaves. These slaves were to be sold to people in Europe and America. Kings are getting rich from this trade and Ghezo learns he has to make a moral decision about it.

Ghezo finally decides that he's had enough. These Europeans and Americans are ruining Africa as a whole. He's going to use his elite forces to fight off this horrible trade. This movie could have just simply have been about that but it gets very convoluted with tons of side stories.

We then get introduced to Nawi. She's been cast away by her father as she refuses her arranged marriage. There's nowhere else but to join the armed forces at this point. Much of the movie is about her developing into one of the elite warriors in this movie. This could have been awesome for the movie but they get a little too convoluted with again adding too much to this movie.

You can kind of see a theme with my qualms about this movie. They packed too much into this movie to become an isolated movie. The pacing of this movie is a bit sporadic and uneven. I felt they could have had multiple movies from this one movie alone. They just needed to focus a lot more on individual stories.

I loved Nasica's story as she's fighting demons from her past and fighting her own ego. Nawi's progression was great as well and that deserved a story on its own. Even King Ghezo could have had his own movie. Those are three separate interesting stories from this movie alone. Then you also have your side stories with side characters.

The movie is also a little bit too on the nose with a lot of elements in this movie. It's quite predictable because you can tell they're totally pandering to their audience with expeditions and showcases of dance, wildlife, scenery that doesn't totally help tell the story of this movie. Admittedly they are very beautiful but they didn't need to be in there. It could have been in the background and just focus on your main character stories.

There's also a nagging problem with the movie where there aren't a ton of learning moments. There's maybe one or two but there are lessons here that they try to tell each other but no one really suffers circumstances. Nawi does a lot of things that should have gotten her head chopped off but she always gets away with a stern look from her authorities. She cries and then everything is fine. That happens quite a lot in this movie and it's a little weird.

I don't know about you but kings usually have egos and this Ghezo guy has to be a saint with so much patience to deal with so many people undermining him right in front of his face. I know I had a few eye rolls at some of the antics that were happening in this movie.

The action gets good later on but even the action is hard to decipher what's going on at certain times. At times it's really dark and everyone is moving a mile a minute and its hard to see who is hitting who. The daytime battles did much better for me to understand what's going on.

Overall, I still had fun with this movie and that's mostly in the back half of the movie despite the occasional eye rolls. It's an okay time but I don't think I could really recommend this movie. You can have an okay time if you're in there for a popcorn action movie. Even still some of those nagging moments can get on your nerves. I have to unfortunately give this movie a 5.5 out of 10. I honestly really wanted to like this movie.