The Woman King

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Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves

 

Warriors of the Oyo Empire are having their evening meal. Prisoners from the Dahomey and other territories to be sold to the slave trade are kept in huts and don't dare go up against these fearsome soldiers or they'll be killed and they can't run because they use horses. But, it's a quiet night and not even the animals are stirring in the tall grass. A burst of bird-flight spooks one of the younger soldiers and the others enjoy a good laugh at his expense.

 

It will be their last laugh.

 

Out of the grass, silently, rises many women, suited for battle and with battleaxes resting on their shoulders. On point is Nanisca (Viola Davis), with a look so fierce and baleful that if the warriors knew ice-water it would be running in their veins. She raises her axe and with a ululating cry storms forward with the rest of her warriors, all women. They are the Agojie, the specialist unit of women-warriors from Dahomey, who expect and demand the respect of their citizens, and who run out of the brush like a wave, axes flashing. They won't flash for very long as Oyo blood will dull them.

One may gripe about the super-hero glut of movies, even though they have abated somewhat as studios find their footing with them. But they have paved a way for people to accept the "adventure" movie as a good evening's entertainment even if not populated with people in spandex. The Woman King, directed by Gina Prince-Blythewood, owes quite a bit to that trend, seeing as it shepherded a precedent for studios to consider financing a film about woman-warriors (Wonder Woman) and African locales and story-lines (Black Panther). Those were fantasies, however. The Woman King purports to tell history.

It is 1823 and the kingdom of Dahomey, under King Ghezo (John Boyega) is approaching the time when they must pay tribute to the Oyo and its leader, General Oba Ade (Jimmy Odukoya), despite that the leader is known for raids and for interfering in Dahomey's own trade with Europeans for slaves and other resources. It is the Oyo plan to absorb Dahomey and eliminate its influence; why accept tribute when they can have it all? The raids are merely prelude for an inevitable attack, and Ghezo seeks to forestall the inevitable by accepting the Oyo demands.

But, Nanisca, leader of the Agojie warriors, knows that the Dahomey are merely being bled slowly before an inevitable take-over bid, and suggests the training of new recruits to fend off any new raids. The rescued women are brought into the Agojie training facility, as well as other women who volunteer or who are too rebellious to become slaves or wives. In that latter category is Nawi (Thuso Mbedu), who has some rough edges that need to be disciplined and "smoothed over" before she earn her place among the warriors, or risk being sold for failing.

She comes under the tutelage of the trainer Izogie (Lashana Lynch), who recognizes the girl's defiance but also potential. The film follows Nawi's training, but also her relationship with a half-Portugese/half-Dahomey trader (Jordan Bolger) who is not unsympathetic to his kingsmen, but also has to live in another world, too.

This is great adventure movie material, but the distinction is that it is told from the native's point of view, not from the colonialists'. And, despite the inclusion of that trader, there is no "outsider savior" to intermingle and "help" or even explain the situation. Which is as refreshing as it is long overdue. The basic storyline is as old as Kurosawa, but how they play it is as old as Spartacus.

There has been some yelping about history and inaccuracies (and I'm usually the first "yelper"), about how the kingdom of Dahomey was just as culpable in the slave trade (and it very much was), but The Woman King does not shy away from that fact, instead concentrating on the Agojie and their efforts to stop the influence of the Oyo Empire over their affairs. And there is the acknowledgment that the rulers of Africa were just as complicit in trading human beings as the Europeans—just less efficient and far-reaching. There have always been slaves, just the definition of civilization has changed.

That's an important statement to make. And it features in the story by actor Maria Bello and Dana Stevens' script. The slave trade has always been a sensitive subject and a more complicated one than the safe narrative (if it is allowed to be spoken about at all!) that has been agreed upon, and is part of the larger story of power and oppression than the narrative of any one race. The story of agency and a people's ability to achieve it is the ultimate story of the ascent of human-kind.

And that is a story vigorously told in The Woman King. That the story is fascinating without white-washing in the broader points is an example of just how bold the artisans making the film are. And that goes to the actors as well. Viola Davis has long been a national treasure and her performance as Nanisca is traditional in its depiction of scowling generals who fight the periphery of what is lost to achieve what is to be gained. And watching her walk in this film is one of the subtle joys I had in this movie. Lashana Lynch wins the Toshiro Mifune Award for making the most of a role that could be cliched but instead seems fresh and more than just what appears on the page—she has a habit of doing that.

 

It's a great cast in a great movie. Highly recommended.

No Time to Die

James Bond's Swann Song

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In The War of Orphans, Winning is Who You Leave Behind

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"Tell Mother I Died Game" ("Well, It Just Goes to Show No One's Indestructible")

 

The continuity-conscious Daniel Craig era of the James Bond series has had a through-line simmering throughout all of its previous four films—"Don't trust anyone." 

From Craig's first film, Casino Royale, when the newly designated "00" agent James Bond has a moment of romantic weakness with the wrong person, continuing to the next film when he finds that his service has been compromised, and that the allied CIA works to cross-purposes, through Skyfall, where his boss "M" (Dame Judi Dench) sacrifices agents (including himself) indiscriminately, to the last one, where he discovers he can't even trust his past, this version of Bond walks under a cloud of suspicion, never letting his armor down, lest he be betrayed...by anyone. 

By the time of Craig's fourth film, SPECTRE, he has tipped so far over the edge that he draws down on a random mouse to ask it "Who sent you? Who are you working for?"   

As the song (from Quantum of Solace) says: "...someone that you think that you can trust is just another way to die."

The official series' 25th entry*, No Time to Die, sees Craig's James Bond retired in Jamaica and recruited—by CIA pal Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright)—for an operation that eventually reunites him with the people he does trust to go after people he can't, something involving a missing scientist. Another one. Hey, the series has been going on for nearly 60 years, everything can't be original and nor would the many "James Bond" devotees not allow the "familiarity factor" to creep into the story ("Where's the Aston Martin?" "Where's the martini line?" "I didn't hear 'Bond...James Bond!" "Is he going 'rogue' again?"**).

Still, with all the Fleming novels having been filmed—in one form or another—and a good smattering of the short stories included, the filmmakers have been hard pressed to keep Bond current, the movie-plots being set "a few minutes from now" with call-backs from past novels and films spattered in, as well as acknowledgments from other sources that the producers use to know that they know they're being watched.*** And the films have for the most part been formulaic—Pre-Credit Sequence/Main Title/Meeting with M/Visit to Q/Two Women (at least) with one being of mixed loyalty/The Sacrificial Lamb/Meet the Villain/Big Finish (with Explosion)/Sting in the Tail With a Challenging Henchman/"James Bond Will Return in..."—so that there were things you could count on. Rules were played with, but some you just didn't violate.

 

No Time to Die up-ends them.

As I mentioned, the Craig films are continuity-conscious. When last we left James Bond (Daniel Craig, pushing it this time, in all aspects—age, acting, etc...), he had crushed the international crime league, S.P.E.C.T.R.E., and brought to ground (literally) its ring-leader, Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Christoph Waltz)—but didn't kill him—instead walking off into the London night with Dr. Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux), daughter of the mysterious SPECTRE middle-man Mr. White (seen in three of the Craig's). The last shot of SPECTRE had the two seated in Bond's recently re-constructed Aston Martin, sharing smug, self-satisfied smiles. They were meant for each other.

No Time to Die begins with an episode from the past (not involving Bond, but will), and the story of the two scar-crossed lovers on a European honeymoon of sorts that is ruined when Bond is attacked visiting the grave of...Vesper Lynd (the "other woman" from Casino Royale). Coincidence? Not much of one, and as Swann and Bond are high-tailing it out of there, it's revealed that Blofeld has engineered the whole thing from his prison and implicates Madeleine. Despite her protests, Bond puts her on a train and she's out of his life. Bond and his trust-issues again.

In the past, we'd gotten used to the disappearing Bond-girl act, where after the final clinch of each movie, she is never seen...or mentioned...again. "Who?" But, the fact that Seydoux is even there—and she's the only actress playing the same Bond-woman part over two movies—means that she's special. And that the producers have "borrowed" a piece of music from the series' past (written by John Barry!!) to serenade the Bond-Swann romance means she's more than special. More on that later—Madeleine Swann Will Return.

Five years later and Bond is retired in Jamaica and alone, spending his days fishing, cooking and (probably) drinking. One day, he comes back to his house and sees evidence that someone had been there—someone who smokes cigars. He goes into town, realizes he's being followed, and manages to catch the culprits in the act. It turns out to be Leiter and a State Department official Logan Ash (Billy Magnussen) who are trying to get Bond to help track down Valdo Obruchev (David Dencik), a biochemist who has recently been kidnapped by SPECTRE. Bond had a hand in bringing him in during his tenure, and under the agency's careful watch, the man had been working on something called the Heracles Project, a form of targeted weaponized virus. MI6 lost him and the CIA is trying to get him back.

But, they're not the only one. Also tracking him in Jamaica is a "00" agent from MI6, in fact, the new "007" ("I'll bet you thought they'd retired it"), Nomi (Lashana Lynch), who's also on the look-out for the chemist. Despite her warnings to back off, Bond travels to Cuba, where SPECTRE agents seem to be gathering. Nomi is there too, and with the help of a new CIA agent (Ana de Armas), Bond walks right into a viper's nest.

The Cuba sequence, with its fights, the jokey repartee of Bond and "Paloma," their pauses to drink, while Nomi is skulking in the background looking for opportunity is probably the highlight of the film. It works like a violent dance, with a Cuban jazz background (part of Hans Zimmer's functional score) that gives it verve and a sense of hysteria. That it follows one of the creepiest scenes in a Bond film probably helps to provide that sense of chaotic relief.

But, just because that's the giddy apex of the movie doesn't mean the rest of its bad. There's a hell-bent Aston Martin chase in an Italian villa, a spooky cross-country shoot-out through a foggy Norwegian forest that is terrific, and another example of those spectacular villain lair designs that have always set the series apart from its competitors. 

This is another of those Bond films that stun for how well done the practical effects are, the cinematography—by not one of the upper tier of photographers—is lush and colorful, the editing is crisp and tight (while giving you a sense of continuity and flow—something not apparent in Quantum of Solace), and the sheer kinetic verve of the action sequences goggle. Credit director Cary Joji Fukunaga for his precise direction and making a movie that never feels like it's 2 hours 46 minutes in length ("We Have All the Time in the World," indeed!). It's a bit of a miracle, really.

Fukunaga has also inspired Craig's most intense performance as Bond, part of which must also be credited to Phoebe Waller-Bridge's re-write of the original Purvis/Wade script. Fukunaga's practice of letting the actors "wing it" gives the film a richer, fuller life, much more than the standard Bond direction of "line (beat)/funny line (beat-beat)" that makes the viewing of the older films of the series seem awkward. Here the dialogue fairly scampers when Craig's present, and only slows to a crawl when Rami Malik's puppet-master Safin appears. "He's kinda creepy" is how he's described early and, indeed, he is, reminiscent of a trembling Peter Lorre, with a philosophy that's a bit hard to decipher, though natter on about it he does. The Bond villains have some motivation, whether it be greed, errant activism, or a power grab. Safin is simply crazy, but a self-important, rambling crazy.

Now, this is going to be a spoiler-free review, but, as mentioned, this one up-ends things, but not in a way that anyone who's read a book by Bond-creator Fleming wouldn't recognize. Because the Bond films have only flirted with a strict continuity lately means they can get away with it with no harm done. The older films had a strict "Bond is fresh with each adventure" edict, which the Craig films have ignored. Bond never got hurt in the old films, but now they keep track of the scars. This is Craig's last film—he's been doing it for 16 years, longer than anybody, and wife Rachel Weisz was getting annoyed he was coming home broken. There will be another Bond, but whether the series will be as continuity-conscious next go-'round hasn't been decided. 

Original Bond producer Cubby Broccoli always maintained that Bond should be "at the top of his game" and that nobody would be interested in an "early Bond" origin story. When his kids got control, they tried it with Craig and it's worked. But, now that they've done it, there's no need to do it again. Bond may go a different route, like going back to stand-alone movies. Maybe they'll do Cold War period pieces. Maybe they'll remake a couple of the bad ones. Who's to say? And who's to say who'll be the next Bond. Finding Craig was something of a miracle despite the initial nay-saying, so I'll trust their judgment on the matter.

 

One thing is certain and that is, as the credit says "James Bond will Return." As long as the British flag flies, and the box office receipts are healthy.

 

* "Official" refers to the films made by EON Productions (founded by Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli), starting with Dr. No in 1962, and featuring the Ian Fleming titles they had the film-rights to, which—at the time—excluded "Casino Royale" and (owing to an early '60's plagiarism suit) "Thunderball". "Casino Royale" appeared ("unofficially") as an episode of CBS-TV's "Climax" (starring Barry Nelson as "Jimmy" Bond, American) and a 1967 "spoof" film starring David Niven, Peter Sellers and Woody Allen, before EON got the rights to it for the first of Daniel Craig's films. Thunderball became an EON presentation when the fellow who won that lawsuit wanted to make his movie with Sean Connery and worked out a deal with EON to "present" the film—with Connery—thus avoiding any competition that might hurt box-office receipts. However, when that same guy wanted to remake Thunderball (which, contractually, he could do after ten years), things were so contentious between him and EON that both sides battled in court before that remake (called Never Say Never Again and starring Sean Connery) was released in 1983, the same year as EON's Octopussy starring Roger Moore. EON now owns the rights to both the books "Casino Royale" and "Thunderball" (even including those "un-official" movie versions). They've since been doing original stories for ages, (and over several agents), and it's a wonder when some morsel of the original Fleming writing sneaks undercover into the films.

 

** The series' Bond has "gone rogue" in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Licence To Kill, Die Another Day, Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall, and SPECTRE. It's as if the producers have preferred Bond's role to be less a company man and more of a rebel.

 

*** Hmm. Live and Let Die was put in during the craze for "Blax-ploitation" films, The Man with the Golden Gun was taken out of its novel-locale of Cuba to be set in Hong Kong, Thailand, and Cambodia to catch the "Kung-Fu" craze, Moonraker timed to take advantage of the Star Wars-prepped audience, Octopussy threw in some Indiana Jones action, Goldeneye's Xenia Onatopp was a soul-sister to Never Say Never Again's Fatima Blush, the fight sequences of late owe much to the "Bourne" series, and the Austin Powers movies stole all of the series' leering jokes leaving the Craig films to be a bit more stoic—although the Bond screenwriters stole the "villain-is-a-relation-to-the-hero" bit from Goldmember...as either series might say "Tit for Tat" 

 

Related Links: Now I've Seen Everything Dept.: The James Bond Series