“The Woman King” turned out to be another (quasi)historical epic spectacle that we have actually seen countless times. As a generic action spectacle set in some historical period, written according to the formula of “Braveheart”, for which it is clear from the first scene to the last how it will end. The only thing that makes “The Woman King” different from all that force of historical spectacles is that we don’t have warriors, but women warriors, but when you remove that, everything is exactly the same as what we’ve seen before. Screenwriters Maria Bello and Dana Stevens found a historical basis for African women – warriors, in the fact that in the African kingdom of Dahomey, located in the area of present-day Benin, there was a detachment of female warriors.
These African Amazons were active from the beginning of the 17th to the end of the 19th century, and the action takes place here in Dahomey in 1823. The era of slavery is at its peak and European slave traders continue to regularly ravage Africa and kidnap people to work on plantations in America. The fact that African kingdoms and tribes are at war with each other and also participate in the slave trade in order to harm their rivals also works in the hands of the slave owners. A fragile peace reigns between the kingdoms of Oya and Dahomey, which has just received a new, young king, Gheza (John Boyega). His right-hand man is Nanisca (Viola Davis), the commander of an elite women’s unit who immediately in the opening scene attacks a rival group and frees the women who were supposed to end up in the lower deck of some ship sailing to America.
Dahomey is actually in a subordinate relationship to the larger and more powerful Oyu, and everything will lead to a showdown between those two African kingdoms. Although it is obvious both technically and production-wise that “The Woman King” is one of those expensive, luxurious and well-filmed historical spectacles, I was really disappointed that the story is so generic and superficial. The only thing that makes “The Woman King” different from similar films is that it fully follows these trends of wok culture that I find incredibly irritating. Well, not only are the heroines here women, but also the setting is Africa, which in itself is not bad at all, but the way in which this film is designed and presented is bad.
Like the most ordinary pamphlet in which there is not a shred of originality or inventiveness, and even the subplots are like a romance between a young man who arrived with slave owners from Brazil to go shopping, and his mother is originally a slave from Dahomey, and a new young warrior who will turn out to be Nanisca’s daughter, terrifyingly predictable. I could barely bring myself to watch this movie to the end, mostly to confirm what I assumed would happen after the opening third of the movie. I’m really annoyed by such lazy, superficial films in which it is clear from the very beginning how the story will unfold, and all those who, like me, like to watch such epic historical dramas, should take a closer look at “Braveheart” one more time.