Looks really good. Surprised by the budget being $50M. I figured it'd been a bit more. Some reviews so far:
Toronto Review: Viola Davis In Gina Prince-Bythewood’s ‘The Woman King’
deadline.com/2022/09/toronto-review-gina-prince-bythewood-the-woman-king-1235113891/Gina Prince Bythewood’s period film The Woman King opens with an incredible action sequence with General Nanisca (Viola Davis) of The Agojie army approaching a village of men holding their women hostage. Men are getting sliced, diced and tossed across the screen by these mighty warrior women. After they arrive back in the Dahomey kingdom victorious, the story introduces Nawi (Thuso Mbedu), an unmarried young woman deemed worthless because she has no husband. She’s taken to the palace and introduced to Izogie (Lashana Lynch) and Amenza (Shiela Atim), Dahomey’s top soldiers in the King Ghezo Royal guard. Women in the army are respected, and when they pledge to service, they take an oath of celibacy and childlessness to be accepted and train.
The Woman King (TIFF) Review
www.joblo.com/the-woman-king-tiff-review/PLOT: In 1823, Nanisca (Viola Davis) is the bold leader of the Agojie, an all-female regiment tasked with protecting the kingdom of Dahomey. Reeling from a traumatic experience where she was taken as a slave, Nanisca is at odds with the slave trade her kingdom participates in but is forced to follow orders. As the nightmares become harder to stave off, she’s tasked with training a new generation of warriors, including the headstrong Nawi (Thuso Mbedu), with whom she shares a surprising connection.
One thing worth noting is the controversy that’s already come up regarding the film’s depiction of the Kingdom of Dahomey. Many expected that the kingdom participating in the slave trade would be left out of the movie, but the opposite is true. One of the movie’s central conflicts is that Davis’s Nanisca is boldly against the practice, while her king (John Boyega’s King Ghezo) participates somewhat reluctantly. I’ll leave it to the historians to say whether or not this is accurate, but they at least tackle the subject head-on and make The Woman King a much more well-rounded historical epic in that regard than some gave it credit for based on the trailer alone.
Director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s movie is a solid historical epic benefitting from a tremendous cast, led by Davis at her most badass. If people like Bob Odenkirk and Liam Neeson can become action heroes in their fifties, Davis seems bound to show people she can too. Her raw intensity is backed up by a newly jacked physique that makes her an imposing action heroine, and she performs exceptionally well in the numerous action scenes. However, her pathos and empathy for not only her people but also those she helps conquer are what really makes Nanisca an absorbing lead. Lashana Lynch backs her up as Izogie, the band’s most formidable warrior, and it’s another badass role for the actress, who seems a natural fit for the action genre.
BBC Review:
www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220910-the-woman-king-review-a-spectacular-action-filled-epicAt the start of The Woman King, Viola Davis (Nanisca) lets out a war whoop that sends her all-female army into battle, mercilessly wielding spears and machetes. It takes nothing away from Davis's typically fierce performance, as a fictional 19th-Century African general named Nanisca, that the film's true star is its director. Gina Prince-Bythewood doesn't make a wrong move as she orchestrates all the elements of this action-filled historical epic, filled with vivid characters and cultural resonance. Known for the character-driven Love and Basketball (2000) and the action movie The Old Guard (2020), Prince-Bythewood blends the strengths of both films to spectacular effect in The Woman King.
Set in 1823, the story draws on the history of Dahomey, the real West African kingdom that existed from the 17th-19th Centuries in what is now Benin. The Agojie, the women's army guarding the king, was famous for its physical strength and ferocity. The Agojie also inspired the fictional Dora Milaje warriors in 2018's Black Panther, which this new film inevitably brings to mind. But The Woman King, without Marvel superpowers, has a more serious tone and connection to history. What the films do share is a reverence for African culture.
After The Woman King's opening battle against the Oyo, a tribe that captures other Africans to be sold as slaves, Prince-Bythewood takes us into the world of Dahomey. Every part of it is sharply detailed, from Nanisca's hair in a curly Mohawk, to the decorative handles of the machetes and the small shells the women wear on their battle gear and braid into their hair. Its ruler, King Ghezo (John Boyega, with regal bearing), is inexperienced but smart enough to take some counsel from Nanisca.
She is the film's soul, but she shares attention with several other distinctive characters. Lashana Lynch is Izogie, who goes into battle with a gleeful smile and fingernails sharpened to points, the better to poke an enemy's eyes out. Yet she has an understanding side. Thuso Mbedu, such a discovery as Cora in The Underground Railroad (2021), is poignant and natural as Nawi. Her role is nearly as important as Davis's and her character's trajectory is the most dramatic. Nawi is a teenager who refuses to be married off to a middle-aged man who slaps her across the face at their first meeting, so her parents give her as a gift to the king, who allows her to become a warrior. But she must grow out of her arrogance, which is a reflection of Nanisca's own.
Each of the major characters is deftly given a backstory, and some have secrets, filled in through bits of dialogue and shared confidences among the women. We learn that Nanisca was once captured by the Oyo, but escaped, a past that has left her with a thirst for justice and vengeance. She is hard-nosed in order to protect her soldiers. "Your tears mean nothing," she tells Niwa. "To be a warrior you must kill your tears." Yet Davis also creates softer moments, suggesting how much Nanisca's toughness protects her from her painful past.
These woman are warriors, not saints. Historically, Dahomey flourished by taking captives and selling them, and the film doesn't ignore that complicity. Instead, it enhances Nanisca's role as heroine by making her the king's conscience, telling him more than once that slavery is unnecessary and immoral, even if he is not trading his own people.
The Woman King is about strength and will, about independence and abolishing slavery, themes that Dana Stevens' screenplay announces too bluntly at times. "We are the blade of freedom," Nanisca yells, inspiring her troops into one more battle. But Prince-Bythewood never lets social themes get in the way of crowd-pleasing action. Especially in the film's last section, the battles are relentless and kinetic, as the camera takes us inside the hand-to-hand combat, with warriors plunging spears into bodies and slicing throats. This is not benign, cartoonish action. There are Agojie deaths, the price of being a soldier.
In 2019, Black Panther star Lupita Nyong'o travelled to Benin for a television documentary about the real Agojie, Warrior Women with Lupita Nyong'o. She admires the Dahomey women's strength while acknowledging what she calls their crimes of human trafficking, pointing to the need for truth as well as the part movies can play. "The role of fantasy is to create the heroes that we cannot have in the real world, because people are complicated," she says. The Woman King leans toward fantasy in its heroic moments, but is rooted in truth about war, brutality and freedom. It is a splashy popcorn movie with a social conscience.
Rogerebert.com Review:
www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-woman-king-movie-review-2022From the moment Gina Prince-Bythewood became a director, her strength has always resided in her commitment to love stories. In her films, sumptuous twilight passions happen on a basketball court, they occur between generations, on the ladder rungs of show business, and between immortals. They center Black women carrying power and interiority, while finding strength within themselves, and often, other Black women. With her Netflix produced film, “The Old Guard,” she continued those themes on a grander scale. But nothing in her filmography can wholly prepare you for the lushness of her latest work.
In going into “The Woman King,” a big-hearted action-epic whose major challenge is being sincere and historical while fulfilling its blockbuster requirements, you might feel some hesitation. Especially in a cinematic landscape that prizes broad statements on race over sturdy storytelling. You might wonder how Prince-Bythewood can shape a tale centering the Agojie warriors—an all-woman group of soldiers sworn to honor and sisterhood—hailing from the West African kingdom of Dahomey, when one considers their hand in perpetuating the transatlantic slave trade. It’s a towering task approached by Prince-Bythewood and screenwriter Dana Stevens with gentle sensitivity, and a fierce desire to show Black women as the charters of their own destiny.
The film begins with flair: A group of men lounge at the center of a field by a campfire. They hear rustling in the tallgrass; they see a flock of birds fly away on a breeze. Suddenly a menacing Viola Davis playing Nanisca, the world-weary Agojie general, emerges from the grass armed with a machete. An entire platoon then appears behind her. The ensuing slaughter of the men (the women in the village are left unharmed), is soaked in delirious gore, and is part of this warrior ensemble’s mission to free their imprisoned kin. Nanisca, however, loses so many comrades in the process that she decides to train a new batch of recruits.
After the thrilling opening battle scene, the plot to “The Woman King” can feel convoluted. But its excesses serve the film’s blockbuster goals. A defiant teenager, Nawi (Thuso Mbedu), is offered up as a gift to the young King Ghezo (John Boyega) by her domineering father, who is frustrated with his obstinate daughter’s refusal to marry her many suitors. Nawi, however, never makes it to the King, as the unflinching yet fun warrior Izogie (a phenomenal Lashana Lynch), sees Nawi’s resistance as a strength, and enlists her in Nanisca’s training. Being part of the Agojie promises freedom to all involved, but not to those they conquer. The defeated are offered as tribute to the draconian Oyo Empire, who then deal their fellow Africans as slaves to Europeans in exchange for guns. It’s a circle of oppression that the guilt-ridden Nanisca wants the King to break. In the meantime, a dream has haunted Nanisca, and the disobedient Nawa, who struggles with upholding some of Agojie clan’s strict requirements, particularly the "No Men" part. It might be the key to what ails her.
Despite these clunky narrative beats—there’s a twist halfway through that nearly causes the story to fall apart—the sheer pleasure of “The Woman King” resides in the bond shared by these Black women. They are the film’s love story as they commit to each other as much as they do to their grueling training. Vast compositions of Black women caring and nurturing each other proliferate “The Woman King,” and the rituals and songs they share adds further layers to their deep devotion.
Prince-Bythewood isn’t afraid to rely on emotional heft in an action movie. Every actor in this deep ensemble is granted their own space; they're organically challenged but never artificially wielded as a teaching tool for white audiences. Sheila Atim, who along with Mbedu turned in a stellar performance in Barry Jenkins’ “The Underground Railroad,” is measured, aware, and giving as Nanisca’s trusted second-in-command Amenza. Boyega is commanding yet beguiling as a king projecting confidence while still learning what it means to lead (many of his line readers are instantly quotable).
“The Woman King,” however, is quite messy. The overuse of VFX for landscapes, fake extras, and fire often flattens the compositions by cinematographer Polly Morgan; she finds greater latitude in capturing the bruising yet precise fight choreography. And the low-simmering romance that emerges between Nawa and Malik, a ripped Portuguese-Dahomen fantasy (Jordan Bolger) returning to discover his roots, while clear in its intent to test Nawa’s dedication to her sisters, is unintentionally comical in its awkwardness. The script far too often also tries to neatly tie together these characters, especially Nawi and Nanisca.
But when “The Woman King” works, it’s majestic. The tactile costumes by Gersha Phillips ("Star Trek Discovery") and the detailed production design by Akin McKenzie (“Wild Life” and “When They See Us”) feel lived in and vibrant, especially in the vital rendering of the Dahomey Kingdom, which is teeming with scenes of color and community. Terilyn A. Shropshire’s slick, intelligent editing allows this grand epic to breathe. And the evocative score by Terence Blanchard and Lebo M. gives voice to the Agojie’s fighting spirit.
Though Davis is the movie’s obvious star, turning in an aching and psychically demanding performance that’s matched pound for pound with her interiority, Mbedu reaffirms herself as a star too. She gives herself over to the tale of a woman who so desires to be heard that she never backs down to anyone. A glimmer follows Mbedu in her every line read, and gloom follows her in devastation. There’s one scene where she cries over the body of a fallen warrior and lets out a wail with an impact that travels from your toes to your spleen.
The subplots in “The Woman King” might undo it for some. But the magnitude and the awe this movie inspires are what epics like “Gladiator” and “Braveheart” are all about. They’re meant for your heart to override your brain, to pull you toward a rousing splendor, to put a lump in your throat. In between the large, sprawling battles of "The Woman King," and in between the desire to not yield to white outside forces and the urge to topple oppressive and racist systems, the guide is sisterly love, Black love. Thrilling and enrapturing, emotionally beautiful and spiritually buoyant, “The Woman King” isn’t just an uplifting battle cry. It’s the movie Prince-Bythewood has been building toward throughout her entire career. And she doesn’t miss.