Director Gina Prince-Bythewood plants the bold flags of storytelling and myth-making with this stirring period action movie, inspired by the 19th-century west African kingdom of Dahomey (now Benin) and its Agojie, an Amazon brigade of female warriors tougher and more feared than any men: somewhere between a special forces unit and a praetorian guard for the king.
Viola Davis plays Nanisca, the battle-scarred general of the Agojie: tough, disciplined and hyperalert for any sign of attack from their old enemy, the Oyo empire, and worried that the new king Ghezo (John Boyega), who has deposed his brother in a coup, is not sufficiently focused on these things. Nanisca’s loyal lieutenants are Izogie (Lashana Lynch) and Amenza (Sheila Atim) but she nonetheless finds herself strangely preoccupied by a new hothead recruit, Nawi (Thuso Mbedu), who has been effectively dumped on the military by an angry father on account of her resistance to marriage. As two Brazilian aristocrat slavers come to their country, eager to exploit the warring factions who each wish to sell off their prisoners of war into slavery, Nawi is to come of age as a warrior and make a terrible discovery about her past.
