The Woman King has a fierce fire in its belly

polygon.com:

The Woman King isn’t the simple tale of good and evil it appears to be. The film does pit the Agojie, a fierce all-female army from the historical West African kingdom of Dahomey (and inspiration for Black Panther’s Dora Milaje), against the moral rot of chattel slavery. The Dahomey aren’t pure victims, though. They also participate in the slave trade — not as extensively as the neighboring Oyo Empire, which has been terrorizing Dahomey settlements and selling their people to Portuguese slavers for decades. But the Dahomey do capture enemies and sell them as slaves. Some within the kingdom oppose the practice on moral grounds. Others are simply looking to get rich and don’t care how they do it.

This ambiguity makes The Woman King less of a nationalist exercise than S.S. Rajamouli’sRRR, Mel Gibson’s Braveheart, and so many other films that turn real historical events, with all their messy contradictions and pesky nuances, into straightforward David-and-Goliath stories. To be clear, this is still a Hollywood version of history, with all the rousing action, inspirational uplift, and soaring soundtrack choices that label implies. But director Gina Prince-Bythewood (The Old Guard, Beyond the Lights) and screenwriter Dana Stevens do complicate the issue, mostly for the better.

Viola Davis stars as Nanisca, the leader of the Agojie, who carries the weight of the kingdom on her muscular shoulders, alongside some pretty nasty scars. As the film opens, the Agojie are considering how to strike back against their Oyo oppressors. And they’ve recently suffered losses in raids against the Oyo designed to free Dahomey captives headed to a port auction block. As a result, they’re looking for new recruits.

This is good news for Nawi