The Woman King is more than just a historical action film; it is a genuinely rare example of breathing life into the past with verve and imagination.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 18, 2024

The dialogue is generic -- the formal kind constructed to suit all periods -- but the actors give it all the authenticity it needs, clearly delighted by the ebullience of their characters.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 28, 2022

It is a film designed to inspire audiences and elicit cheers and, by and large, it succeeds.

| Oct 19, 2022

Thankfully, all flimsiness in the screenplay is overcome by the director, Gina Prince-Bythewood, and her committed cast, who transform a familiar dramatic milieu (Mulan meets Gladiator meets Wonder Woman) into thrilling, amphetamine-rush cinema.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 7, 2022

Yes, the Woman King could be filed under wish-fulfilment, but that’s true of so many action classics.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 7, 2022

A great time at the movies. A rare cinematic event.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 7, 2022

The end result is a novel, representation-stretching enterprise that, paradoxically, plays like the “sort of film they don’t make any more”.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 7, 2022

exemplary intersectional feminist call to arms for the African sisterhood to keep building on the achievements of their female ancestors & to keep fighting – & dancing – as they did, or might have done... with or without the approval of their patriarch

| Oct 7, 2022

While the story sees the state draw back from involvement in the slave trade, questions of complicity still linger more than most popcorn movies would allow.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 6, 2022

The Woman King isn’t intended to be any ordinary account of history. It is a vibrant, restorative celebration of Black womanhood in all its glory.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 5, 2022

This is a grand spectacle with vivid and theatrical performances.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 4, 2022

A thunderously cinematic good time: see it on the biggest screen you can find.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 2, 2022

Predictable script hitting every conventional beat... It all plays out like a Disney movie made for kids, except with copious throat slitting – and even that is relatively tame in order to maintain the PG-13 rating

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 30, 2022

It’s fast, and it’s loose, and it totally works.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 29, 2022

Prince-Bythewood celebrates these women warriors through impressive fight scenes that are athletic but realistic, eschewing the sort of CGI overkill that has run rampant in recent action films.

| Sep 29, 2022

The Woman King is a crowd pleaser at its core, intent on entertaining the audience as much as elevating a story that many in its audience may not know (though they’ll probably still need to do a bit of research).

| Original Score: B+ | Sep 28, 2022

The Woman King has two unnecessary plot points that distract from the power of the story of the Agojie.

| Sep 26, 2022

If you're someone who loves action movies that use "true events" as an entry to a deeper narrative about surviving trauma, defying misogyny and overcoming personal torment in the face, along with all the ass-kicking, then The Woman King is a masterpiece.

| Sep 26, 2022

Gina Prince-Bythewood films through the lens of Blackness, highlighting the beauty, strength, and fierceness of Black people, unlike most stories about the slave trade that wallow in Black trauma...

| Sep 24, 2022

The kind of nuanced tapestry of the female experience that can only come from a movie centered around multiple women rather than just one.

| Original Score: B+ | Sep 22, 2022