The Woman King crowns Viola Davis as a believable badass
An incredible cast holds court in the film, but Gina Prince-Bythewood struggles to balance the action-packed empowerment story with its real-life atrocities
Film Reviews Viola Davis
Sometimes it’s the movies that are nearly great, but merely good, that break your heart the most.
Such is the case with The Woman King, Gina Prince-Bythewood’s action-packed historical epic set in the early 1820s in the West African Kingdom of Dahomey (today part of Benin). It is a film designed to inspire audiences and elicit cheers and, by and large, it succeeds. But there are undeniable and frequent moments of woozy disconnect, a square-peg-in-round-hole sensation in which this studio-released picture leaps swiftly from detailing the grim realities of the world’s worst prolonged atrocity—the transatlantic slave trade—to GIF-ready beatdowns. Rarely does a film feature a traumatizing rape scene one minute and killer parkour moves the next.
But it’s a pessimist that dwells on disappointment; optimists focus on what works. It’s likely not a surprise that the performances here are all top-notch. Viola Davis plays General Nanisca, head of the elite female warrior squad known as the Agojie (or “Dahomey Amazons” as they were called by Europeans), in a perfect marriage of actor and character. Sheila Atim and Lashana Lynch are similarly spectacular as her top lieutenants, Amenza and Izogie. The 31-year-old Thuso Mbedu, however, is the real find as the co-lead in the picture, 19-year-old Nawi, who refuses to be married off, so joins the Agojie, functioning as our eyes and ears in this new world.
The Agojie serve King Ghezo, John Boyega, whose restrained performance gets a well-earned laugh out of every raised eyebrow. It’s not Boyega’s movie and he knows it, but when he’s on, he’s great. The Dahomey clash with another tribe, the Oyo, but both are caught in an inherited cycle of darkness initiated by the European slave trade. Ghezo holds his head high in relative righteousness: he stopped Dahomey’s sale of their own people to the whites, and only sells their enemies. Nanisca is the visionary who recognizes this, too, must end, and has an economic plan to go with it.
It’s a serious and uneasy topic, and much of it is handled with respectable honesty. But this is also a studio picture, PG-13 at that, so it needs to sell to all four quadrants. The cross-generational implications of slavery quickly dovetail with a preposterous Twilight Saga-esque love story between Nawi and Malik (Jordan Bolger), a preposterously buff visitor from Brazil whose mother was Dahomey and whose father was Portuguese, who has apparently hitched a ride with his slaver buddy, played by the mustache-twirling Hero Fiennes Tiffin.
Other story points involve some Days Of Our Lives stuff about lost children, and a showdown between Viola Davis and the head of the Oyo army who tortured her years ago. There is a considerable amount of tonal whiplash in between shots of young Nawi using a short sword to snap necks.
Ultimately, the truly terrific performances and effective battle scenes deliver in the thrills department. (The MPAA rating keeps it way, way less bloody than a typical Sunday night on HBO.) There is, unfortunately, a hollow feeling at the end. The Agojie were very much real, but the Hollywood-of-it-all creates a “yay, we just ended slavery” vibe, which, historically, is not really the case. Schindler’s List, another film that tries to get its head around an atrocity too big to ever fully understand, concludes with a glimmer of light, but is more realistic with its “uh, what now?” final moments. The Woman King’s aims are different.
Again, there’s a lot that works in The Woman King. Most striking is the overall look of this film, a production designed to rebuke colonialist notions of Africa, the “dark continent.” The architecture of the King’s palace is richly designed, brimming with color and intricate decorative elements. Rarely does one watch a movie and think “great lighting!” but Prince-Bythewood and cinematographer Polly Morgan earned it here. Also, the costumes (from Star Trek: Discovery alum Gersha Phillips) are extraordinary, weaving fierce looks with fiercer weapons. Why would Lashana Lynch want a rifle when she can file her fingernails into instruments of death? The Woman King’s training scenes are more upbeat than most war pictures (think Stripes instead of Full Metal Jacket) and some of the scenes “at court” (especially with the King’s eunuch majordomo) have a fun Game Of Thrones quality.
Prince-Bythewood, whose Beyond The Lights is one of the most overlooked movies of the last decade, has created a vision of historical Africa that has truly never been seen in a mainstream American movie. For that alone, she deserves a crown.
74 Comments
Because the protagonists of this film are Black the obvious problematic issue central to it’s plot will be ignored. Anyone pointing out that the “heroes” of this movie were in fact the slavers, not the French they’re fighting. The war with the French started because the Dahomey were enslaving people in French protectorates. Of course, pointing out this objective fact will no doubt be followed by accusations of bigotry from the virtue signaling douchebags promoting it. Just remember, if you are marginalized, you can do no wrong. You are automatically better than everyone and cannot be held accountable for your actions.
From your commenting history:“I have another idea… Black people need to make up their own shit instead of culturally appropriating every godamned thing they can lay hands on.”So, you can stop pretending that you genuinely give a shit about the African slave trade and this reverse “virtue signaling” act you’re trying to pull and just be glad you somehow got ungreyed by an AVClub desperate for clicks to post the kinds of crap that gets you upvotes on Breitbart.
You’re sooooo brave and SUCH a good person. Congrats on all your bravery and important work.
While he might not care about the African slave trade beyond scoring political points, he’s not wrong about the way reviews have been ignoring the actual history that this movie is drawing from for its story.The part about anyone pointing that out being accused of bigotry, however, is obviously incorrect as he could see from the comment section on this review.
Did you not see the part where I pointed out he made openly racist comments in the past is and therefore is being insincere with his criticism? Or are you jumping in to top his passive aggressive racist insincerity with your own?
I thought that ‘While he might not care about the African slave trade beyond scoring political points’ was a pretty clear acknowledgement of what you pointed out.My own point was that if someone says something accurate but for racist reasons, it’s still accurate. Broken clocks and all that. I tend to engage people on what they say right then, regardless of what they’ve said in the past.
Black people need to make up their own shit instead of culturally appropriating every godamned thing they can lay hands on. is not a “political post/point” but an outright racist point out of a commenting history of racist comments. And if you’re saying “whatever, I agree with the bad faith, racist argument the racist internet troll is making” conveniently ignoring the fact that the article/reviews also pointed out that the reality of the history they’re depicting is complicated and bad, then you can also fuck right off with your both/many sides bullshit.
I tend to engage people on what they say right then, regardless of what they’ve said in the past. This is objectively stupid when you’re dealing with hateful internet trolls, because allowing them to do their insincere “I’m just asking questions!” act is how we end up a bunch of them here in the comment section using this film’s problematic handwaving of a pretty brutal history as a smokescreen while they talk about about how white supremacy doesn’t exist and black people should quit whining about slavery.
This person is an obvious fucking racist troll who is not concerned with the historical accuracy of anything. Not sure how you’re not seeing that.
Ah, stop crying about the majority population being treated unfairly, when the reality is nobody gets their way all the time. It’s ONE movie portraying a Third World culture in a positive light. Go watch “Driving Miss Daisy” and/or “Green Book” and relax.
the “heroes” of this movie were in fact the slaversAre we meant to infer that contemporary Black film is too young to feature morally tainted heroes? Cuz I remember a Kevin Bacon film in which a convicted-because-he-was-guilty child molester saves kids from being molested. John Rambo and the Punisher are coldblooded and gleefully unrepentant killers killing for notions of goodness. I faux-wonder what those three characters (among scores) have in common.
Certain people get Very Concerned about historical accuracy when marginalized people are involved. My coworker who loves 300 is suddenly the world’s foremost African history expert and simply has to talk at length about how inaccurate and dangerous this movie is.
Dangerous? What do they think is possibly “dangerous” about the movie? Also, the Venn diagram of people who like 300 and are white nationalists is basically a perfect circle.
He seems to think we’ll go mad with bloodlust and storm out of the theatre ready to kill whitey. I’m often minding my business in the office when he pops up to ask my opinion “as a black woman” on something race-related; we live in Toronto and the topic of 50% of the city being visible minorities comes up often. I first heard about this movie because he asked if I felt it would be negatively received in Portugal (I go to Portugal often as I have family there). Having married into a Brazilian family and personally witnessing the weird cultural amnesia Portugal has when it comes to slavery, colonialism, and racism, I’m fine with them having their bad guy pop culture moment.
hey uh that’s not true you dunce lmao
I officially agree your ignorant co-worker needs to learn that this is not Sparta, and neither was 300.
Key to being a morally tainted hero is becoming a hero, eventually.
Please reply to me so I can dismiss you.
Nice review but it wouldn’t hurt to break it up with 3-4 more things to scroll past.
The heroes in the trailer:We are the sword of FREEDOM!The heroes in real life:The slave trade has been the ruling principle of my people. It is the source of their glory and wealth. Their songs celebrate their victories and the mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery.Is, um…. is this as revisionist as it looks?
No. You see, White Supremacy MADE those Black people enslave their neighbors!
yes? once the chiefs who sold slaves to the british began to refuse as they realized it was weakening their homelands, the british said nope and forcibly continued the trade
Who were they selling the slaves to?
Prior to the Europeans, they probably worked the slaves to death and/or sacrificed them first-hand. Slavery has been an unfortunate feature of human civilization for as far back as we have recorded history.
Which does not justify it. So you can stop going up and down this comments section endlessly repeating the stupid right-wing talking point of “everyone had/did slaves! that’s how it was back then!” deflection.
Where did I justify it? Am I wrong? And two comments equals up and down / endlessly??
I coulda swore I was making clear how wrong you are when I said: stupid right-wing talking point of “everyone had/did slaves! that’s how it was back then!” deflection.
Ghezo holds his head high in relative righteousness: he stopped Dahomey’s sale of their own people to the whites, and only sells their enemies. Oh. Well. That’s OK then.
Next sentence: “Nanisca is the visionary who recognizes this, too, must end, and has an economic plan to go with it.”
Did it involve paying reparations and apologising?
Has that ever actually happened?
Has that ever actually happened?
why would it?
You do realize race never played in a role to slavery until Europeans (whites) caught on to it. Slavery was done by tribes and used more as a indentured servitude. Which is why reparations didn’t need to be paid. Plus slavery through tribes did not have a 300 year plus dehumanizing effect on black people (particularly American blacks) like American and European slavery. Those tribes aren’t trying (to this very day) to divine themselves from European colonial rule(i.e. the queen who just past) or years of segregation(which still happens now with zoning and funding for black public schools) jim crow and laws that literally keep black people from voting. All based off of the effects of European slave trade. Race was literally invented due to slavery from European and Americans. God please pick up a history book next time before you write something stupid!
Except in real life, that never happened.
King Ghezo did, in fact, limit slave exports – after the British essentially forced him to. Which he then restarted later.Doing a bit of reading, it seemed like every conflict that the Agojie fought in were either slaving raids, defending against their neighbors who were fed up with the slaving raids, or fighting the French who were defending Dahomey’s neighbors against invasion and slaving raids.
Dahomey only existed to provide slaves and terrorize its neighbors. This movie is such bullshit.
noooooooo, yt pippo bad
It is, I, Nanisca, king of the women!
It feels so weird to see so many critics gushing about this whitewashing (pun not intended) movie about one of the worst slaver states in Africa. No, seriously, even compared with their contemporaries Dahomey was horrific. They also murdered hundreds of captives each year in human sacrifices. Look up the Annual Customs of Dahomey.
The movie itself sounds like it’s skillfully written, constructed and acted.It’s just peculiar that this story is the one that people chose to lend their talents to. Particularly when the story had to be considerably changed to be even close to palatable for modern audiences. It’s like having a movie about the American Civil War where the Confederacy seceded from the US in order to end slavery.
It’s like having a movie about the American Civil War where the Confederacy seceded from the US in order to end slavery.Don’t give HBO any ideas.
I mean, I don’t think Viola Davis is being offered a lot of roles as the lead in action movies, particularly movies where her character seems very similar to the fictional character she’s played before that people really like.
“The MPAA rating keeps it way, way less bloody than a typical Sunday night on HBO……but the Hollywood-of-it-all creates a “yay, we just ended slavery” vibe”Sounds like the shit Hollywood keeps churning out these days.
DA HOMIES!!!!!!
Prince-Brythewood directed Old Guard, and that was a pretty great action movie, largely because of the cast and characters. This looks similarly great. It’s also really interesting that this is pretty clearly jumping off of how much folks are into the Dora Milaje in Black Panther and other Marvel properties. Like, this essentially looks like the historical precedent for that fiction, and it’s frankly even cooler to see it divorced from the sci-fi stuff (though I love that) to go more in depth on what it looked like IRL (or the Hollywood version of it). I hope they go into a bit of the culture within the Agoje, and what the culture of the larger Dahomey tribe that led to women warriors protecting a King. If the culture was not matrilineal, what happened that led to this set up? It’s also interesting that the Ayo are the bad guys (i.e. other Black people). If the message is anti-slavery, did the Agoje fight the white slavers? Anyway. Seems like an action movie with a lot going for it, and with a ton of really interesting world building possibilities. Going to go see it.
No. They did not fight the white slavers. The Agoje enslaved people en mass themselves and frequently used their slaves as human sacrifices. They were not nice people.
Unfortunately the history here is pretty bad. 1820s Dahomey were actually the baddies. King Ghezo usurped the throne from his brother with the help of the mentioned Portuguese slave traders; he also (contrary to what this review suggests is present in the film) did in fact sell his own people into slavery, and towards the end of his reign the British fought him to end the slave trade. When the British Empire is on the right side of an issue, you know something’s gone pear-shaped.The origins of the Agoje are a pretty nebulous, but one line of thinking is that female warriors were simply a necessity given the slave raiding of men and the resultant demographic upheavals throughout the region. Their status as elite warriors was possibly Ghezo currying favor with them (because, again, he’d just led a coup against the king and needed allies.) Ahistorical garbage in Hollywood is nothing new, neither are mindless action films, and to some degree it feels foolish to tar this black-helmed one when we’ve had no shortage of films with white or European history distorted for heroic purposes. But I wish critics would even talk about it; this review is actually one of the few that talks about it beyond the “rah rah sisterhood chopping off people’s heads” stuff.
I also wonder how they end it – the Dahomey Amazons were pretty completely and unceremoniously massacred within a few hours at the battle of Adegon.
I presume since that’s a few decades after the setting of this one they’ll just have a “and slavery ended and we beat those bad guys and we’ll not think about what happens then” happy endings.
A weird point as to why the Agoje became a thing to consider is the sexism of the slavers. Might not be the actual origin, but it bears considering that Europeans didn’t really want female slaves. The African rulers tried to sell them, as they were highly skilled workers, but Europeans only wanted men for hard farm labor. So there might have been a shortage of fighting aged men.
I heard somebody on reddit say that you probably need to do a rah-rah, hollywood version of the story just to get it into the public consciousness so that a more historically accurate, morally ambiguous version can be made 10-20 years later. Think how much viking media had to be made before we got The Northman.
“Ahistorical garbage in Hollywood is nothing new, neither are mindless action films, and to some degree it feels foolish to tar this black-helmed one when we’ve had no shortage of films with white or European history distorted for heroic purposes. But I wish critics would even talk about it; this review is actually one of the few that talks about it beyond the “rah rah sisterhood chopping off people’s heads” stuff.”I feel like I’ve now read a lot of critics at least addressing the historical inaccuracies of this and at least nominally calling out the writers and directors, to say nothing of a VERY vocal minority on Twitter. No one was losing their minds about the historical inaccuracies of ‘Braveheart’ or ‘Gladiator’, but making an action film about powerful Black women with some amazing relationships with a pretty basic historical jumping off point seemed to make a lot of people really mad all of a sudden. Weird, that.FWIW, having now seen the movie, it is EXCELLENT. Definitely plan to see it again, if not in the theaters than on streaming for sure.
Fact is that European slavers didn’t trek into the interior of Africa to capture slaves, they were delivered to the coasts by rival tribes (either the result of raids specific to the purpose, or captives from battle). These tribes were blood enemies. This excuses no one of course, but was just the way of the world 200+ years ago.
True. But they actively pursued slaves as that was how the merchants could get wealthy. It was a weird (and, of course, awful) meeting of two different economic systems that led to drastic and intentional exploitation of the African people.
Oh I agree completely, thus my comment about excusing no one. The trans-Atlantic trade made what had been a common practice among warring tribes suddenly incredibly lucrative.
Wow, you worked Schindlers List in there…
This is almost beyond parody.
Europeans called Africa the “dark continent” because it was uncharted by their geographers’ knowledge, and dangerous to explore due to pathogens for which they had no immunity. It had nothing to do with a perceived lack of color in dress, decor, or aesthetics in its inhabitants’ cultures (so far as I know, at least).
Then you are ignorant. In historical circles in the early 20th century, academics didn’t even bother pretending by using euphemisms. They regularly stated openly that the continent had no historical value to academia. I find it odd you bothered to comment considering your statement is so easily disproven and ignorant, yet you wrote it with full confidence of a professor. You need to take some time and ask yourself why you’re leaping to defend racists.
Yeah, it wasn’t remotely a double entendre about the complexion of African people, and it wasn’t translated into literal darkness by art like, say “Heart of Darkness” (which is critical of colonialism but ambivalent about the humanity of the colonized).
This sounds like a movie written by people like my dad who shut down any discussion about European colonial slave trade with “No, we bought the slaves from the AFRICANS. THEY enslaved people, not US” yet makes it look like a tale of female empowerment.
Actually it sounds like a movie written by people who want to show how cool the women warriors of a historical culture were while whistling past the fact that a big part of their coolness involved conquering neighboring tribes and selling their enemies into slavery. Trying to many any connection to modern society is a fool’s errand, regardless of political perspective. It’s a terrible thing that happened and can’t be undone.
While a lot of historical and history-inspired stories focus on people doing laudable things who also did reprehensible things, this one is almost unique in that all of the laudable things were directly tied to the reprehensible things. Compared to 300, where a group of people from a brutal slaveowning society defended their homeland from foreign invaders, the invaders were at least on a mission of conquest and the whole slave thing was just not mentioned.
With the Agojie, every time they went to be brave skilled fighters they were doing it for the purposes of murder and enslavement.
Enter producer and writer Maria Bello
You’re never going to find a historical badass warrior culture that isn’t also terrible by modern ethical standards. Societies develop warrior castes to advantage their own societies, and even if they only intended it for self defense, the warrior caste itself quickly starts calling the shots. Writers have to either whistle past the bad stuff, or make something weird and morally ambiguous like The Northman.
I finally saw the Northman a couple of weeks ago and jesus is that a time and place I’m glad I didn’t live. The palace intrigue probably saved the story because otherwise it’s just a pure revenge film involving the most stoic people you’ll ever see. I do see now why Skarsgaard was so jacked in his appearance on Succession, though they tried to hide it under loose-fitting t-shirts. I remember thinking “damn that guy got piped up.” Checks out!
It seems more like the opposite of that.
Why didn’t this review mention that actress Maria Bello was one of the producers and has a story-by credit of this movie? She lives part of the year in a Narobi, Kenya suburb named….Karen (oh the irony) and said the following:“It’s based on women’s history, a story I found many years ago about this army of women in the 17th century. I was watching Braveheart and I was like, Why isn’t there a woman’s movie like this?”Oy vey. Go back to Karen, Maria.This bulls*it movie is nothing more than The Help with machetes, another version of Black historical events, treated like a vanity project white celebrities, watered down, sweetened for mass consumption and cosigned by Black Hollywood folks who gleefully go on press tours to promote this whitewashed cosplay mess to the mainstream as Black Girl Magic while blowing so much smoke up your a** that you get rectum cancer.Man, Viola, I thought you learned your lesson from The Help…I guess not. I have loved Gina Prince-Bythewood’s (and Viola’s) work and was so looking forward to seeing Shelia Atim in a more substantial role after her amazing work in The Underground Railroad (a series that should be watched instead of this.dreck)…but I can’t support The Woman King.
The Agojie were very much real, but the Hollywood-of-it-all creates a “yay, we just ended slavery” vibe, which, historically, is not really the case.Eesh. Yeah, historically the Dahomey Kingdom was the most ruthless slavers in the region, if not the continent, at that time. I wondered how the movie was going to handle that since it was announced, and that sentence does not give me much hope. In the 1800s Dahomey was in conflict with both African and European powers to continue slavery, which the Agojie regiments were very much a part of. Obviously, a good and nuanced movie can be made out of just about any situation. Then the trailers dropped and it came off more as a typical action movie, with the Agojie seemingly “righteously defending” their kingdom, and it appeared like nuance and historical accuracy wasn’t what they were going for. That said, I’ll watch Viola Davis in anything, so I’ll definetely being seeing it.
The fact this film exists is amazing. It’d be like if they made a movie about the civil war, which made the Confederates the heroes and painted them as the real abolitionists. How it’s not getting absolutely ripped to shreds for its sheer offensiveness is completely beyond me.Also, fun fact, the Dahomey would routinely execute the slaves they couldn’t sell do they wouldn’t have to feed them.
I’m all for this type of film looking further into African culture than we’ve been able to up until recently. what worries me is well, two things. Firstly, I’m more than willing to believe that the writers are highly intelligent and capable writers, Don’t get me wrong there, but it seems like there more than one distinct theme being touched on, the classic woman fighting to prove herself in a man’s world but also slavery and tribal warfare.
Again this isn’t to say you can’t be successfully multifaceted but Hollywood’s track record as of late is not good, most movies I see these days talking about multiple complex social issues get themselves tangled in their own narrative and end up being about nothing, and it’s better for a film to be meaningful about one thing than be skin deep about many (which seems to be the perfect definition of “intersectional”).
My second concern is one this article is highlighting “believable badass”. Again not anything to say that’s an incorrect assessment but in the past I’ve been told many characters were believable and they weren’t. So is it believable as in believable or just because it was a thing that happened in history?
To me a believable badass has flaws, usually allot of obvious flaws that they battle with to overcome their obstacle as well as a believable reason for being as good as they are and they often struggle regardless. That’s just any “badass” regardless of gender. Then there are “Lady Badasses” that films often seem to tell you are badass because they are. Films like Mulan and Captain Marvel really seem to have missed the mark with their Lady Badasses because they were just naturally gifted, which risks, well intentioned or not, sending the wrong message to young women.
Nothing of what Mulan or Captain Marvel go through tell me what it’s like to really be a woman striving to succeed in male dominated areas of expertise because they don’t struggle and therefore can’t strive for anything. whether you like it or not the fact is that most women aren’t stronger than most men so they either have to put in a tonne of work or use their wit, and there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s why cartoon Mulan was so much better, it was more compelling to see Mulan outsmart the brute strength and lack of grace the men had, and made for sometimes very funny moments where even the men can laugh at themselves because these are in general universal differences between men and women that most people are self aware enough to acknowledge.
Is the character just naturally super gifted? will the story unknowingly tell young women that if they aren’t awesome immediately at everything they try then they’re fucked and doomed to eternal mediocrity? Or, will the film inspire women to do their best and not give up in these male dominated areas, knowing fully that they are capable of that which they put their mind to?
Good luck seeing anything in the night scenes.
You review and celebration of slave traders truly disgusts me