The Woman King * * ½

I can't understand all the praise for this silly film, with critics pontificating about feminist messages and race messages and the evil of slavery. Come on! It's fantasy. It's like Wonder woman. It's like Xena.  Good for a giggle, but far too daft to send a serious message.

It's set in Africa when slave trading was all the go: the tribes themselves are selling each other out making them easy pickings for the unconscionable slave traders.  

King and understudy

One of the tribes have developed an army of fighting women, as most of the men have been traded.  They got uniforms and a bossy leader. They practise by hitting wicker statues and throwing one another over the shoulder, rather like TV wrestlers do. 

Outside the warrior women enclave we meet one very uncooperative young lady who refuses to marry an ugly old man, so her Dad gives her up to the warrior women. "See if you'd rather do that!" he tells her.  Surprise surprise she would rather do that.  In fact she gets her rocks off on it.

The boss of the warrior women (Viola Davis) likes and dislikes her, because she is so sassy.  She finds out something personal about her later which is pretty obvious from the get go.

There has to be a love interest too of course and so one of the traders, who is more interested in palm oil, gets the hots for the young cheeky one - a bit of a Pocahontas thing there.

It's also a bit boring to be honest. There is a bit of a skirmish at the beginning, but then it's just talky talky, explain, explain, with stereotype characters until it hots up again at the end. 

For over two hours I felt envious of the warm African sun because for some reason the cinema was freezing.  Don't know why.  Couldn't fall asleep if I wanted to - and there were times when I wanted to - believe me.