THE WOMAN KING (Tri-Star/Sony – Sept. 16): Gina Prince-Bythewood’s The Woman King feels something like what would happen if the Themyscira Island Amazonian sequences of Wonder Woman were feature length. Dana Stevens’ script (from a story by the actress/producer Maria Bello) is set in the 19th-century African kingdom of Dahomey, which is ruled by King Ghezo (John Boyega) but protected by the all-female Agojie corps, headed by the warrior Nanisca (Viola Davis). Dahomey is at war with Oyo, a ruthless nation in active partnership with Portugese slave-traders (Dahomey, for its part, only sells captured prisoners to the traders). As the two kingdoms approach the climax of their conflict, the story also follows Nawi (Underground Railroad‘s Thuso Mbedu), who joins the Agojie to escape an arranged marriage and demonstrates a daring and capacity for military strategy comparable to Nanisca’s, with whom she develops a guarded relationship fueled by secrets in both women’s pasts. Prince-Bythewood provides a few exhilarating action set-pieces, and Woman King‘s technical contributions are vibrant, including Polly Morgan’s cinematography, Terilyn Shropshire’s editing, Akin McKenzie’s production design, Gersha Phillips’ costumes, and Terence Blanchard’s score. Nevertheless, the film gets bogged down when it pursues the predictable Nanisca/Nawi storyline, despite the very fine work done by both of the actresses. The Woman King opts for the inspirational over the surprising, and despite all the ways in which it marks a break with conventional white male action epics, in that sense it’s more of the same.
PRISONER’S DAUGHTER (no distrib): Brian Cox and Kate Beckinsale do what they can with the drab storyline of Prisoner’s Daughter. Catherine Hardwicke’s film (from a script by Mark Bacci) gives us Max (Cox), an ex-boxer and enforcer who’s been in a Las Vegas jail for 12 years while his estranged daughter Maxine (Beckinsale) has struggled to raise her son Ezra (Christopher Convery) with low-paying and precarious jobs that include cleaning up at a strip club. Those don’t provide insurance or pay for Ezra’s epilepsy medications, and on top of that she also has to deal with her truly loathsome addict ex-husband Tyler (an effectively repellent Tyson Ritter), who’s worshiped by his son. When Max is diagnosed with terminal cancer and offered compassionate release if his daughter will take him in, Maxine begrudgingly agrees once she finds out that Max has savings that could help ease her financial problems. Maxine’s seething longtime resentment inevitably yields when it turns out that Max has reformed from his violent drinking days to become a veritable saint, who bonds with his grandson and is willing to sacrifice anything to help out his recovered family. Almost everything in Bacci’s script feels like it came from a screenwriting course, and although it’s fun for a while to watch Cox play a role so different from Logan Roy, and to see Beckinsale in much grittier mode than her norm, Hardwicke’s direction never manages to lift the rote material to a higher level.
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