The Woman King

 

Gina Prince-Bythewood's The Woman King pleases so well because what is at stake is so clearly defined, like the scars on the bodies of the Dahomey warrior women, led by the fierce general Nanisca (Viola Davis).

The scars represent the West African nation's struggle against oppressive forces in the 1820s, both neighboring kingdoms and slavers from Europe, whose trade fuels betrayals and stokes war.

Davis's Nanisca leads a highly skilled band of female fighters, called the Agojie, who stand between Dahomey's continued prosperity and destruction.

The Agojie are trained by the battle-hardened Izogie (Lashana Lynch), who takes an interest in a defiant young woman, Nawi (Thuso Mbedu), whose father has left her at the palace of King Ghezo (John Boyega) because no man will have her.

Nawi's spirited independence garners her the attention, though not favorable at first, of both Nanisca and Izogie as she joins the king's guards.

Prince-Bythewood expertly balances the battle scenes -- which are tightly choreographed, brutal but relatively bloodless -- with intimate exchanges that explore the more political dimensions of the story, represented by Ghezo, the Brazilian slaver Santo (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) and the slaver's companion Malik (Jordan Bolger), the son of an enslaved woman from Dahomey and a white Brazilian.

The large ensemble of players is uniformly superb, with both Davis and the young Mbedu assigned intriguing character arcs that mirror each other, though perhaps inversely.

Prince-Bythewood approaches but does not cross the line into cheap emotionalism, even though the last five minutes of the film will no doubt have many people cheering and on their feet, as they were in the screening I attended.

The Woman King is a fine picture with a resonant contemporary message about the price of freedom and the sacrifices needed to secure it.