Everything good, a little less good and very good about “The Woman King” hits the screen in the opening minutes.

At that point we haven’t yet begun to dig into what makes director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s historical action epic, set in 1820s West Africa in Dahomey (now Benin), a rousing act of defiance against both “Braveheart”-style bloodthirstiness and Marvel movie impersonality. This is a film driven by what makes its characters and conflicts tick. It’s freely fictionalized, and some of it’s overpacked. But “The Woman King” feels human-made, not machine-learned.

So, opening minutes. There’s an ambush in the works. We come upon the all-female Agojie warrior tribe, protectors of Dahomey’s King Ghezo, on the brink of an attack on the Owo Empire soldiers. The slave trade is booming. While Dahomey has its affiliations and ties to the “slavers,” as they trade their own prisoners of war for weapons, the king is hearing from various advisors about the moral low ground they’re taking. Meantime the Owo remain in full, fierce collusion with the colonists, mainly Portuguese.

That’s the background, but “The Woman King” clicks into place easily right away and the right way: a wordless shot of Viola Davis, as the Agojie general Nanisca, ferociously calm, backed by her troops, rising out of the tall grass and ready to strike.

Viola Davis in "The Woman King." (AP)

Nanisca’s story is much, but hardly all, of the story told by screenwriter Dana Stevens (from an idea by Maria Bello). The Agojie warriors, celibate and childless, have a new teenage recruit, more or less dumped at the gates by a disgruntled father. She is Nawi, played by Thuso Mbedu (superb in Amazon’s “The Underground Railroad”). “The Woman King” is as much Nawi’s story as it is Nanisca’s, and the initially wary teacher/student dynamic between these two provides the glue.

Nawi’s training under the formidable warrior Izogie, played with relish and a dryly funny touch by Lashana Lynch, schools the new recruit in battle skills, throat-slitting and the like. When the film leaps into visceral action mode, that action is kinetic-plus and somewhat at odds stylistically, I thought, with the rest of “The Woman King.” The frenzied maneuvers on the battlefield are staged and edited to soften the actual moments of bloodshed, i.e., to avoid an “R” rating, while racking up a huge body count. There are times when you want more of what these performers can do within a longer shot.

The sticking point for some audiences, I suspect, relates to a subplot involving Nawi’s forbidden relationship with a sympathetic Brazilian colonist (Jordan Bolger). This arguably belongs to a somewhat different brand of historical suds than the best of “The Woman King.” Yet director Prince-Bythewood keeps her camera eye on what matters: the faces of characters in action, or reflection. From the leads, to John Boyega’s panther-like king, to Sheila Atim’s striking comrade-in-arms Amenza,this is a splendid ensemble.

Thuso Mbedu as the warrior-in-training Nawi in "The Woman King." (Sony Pictures Entertainment / HANDOUT)

Davis’s character is a woman of deep and lasting scars beneath the ones marking the surface of her skin. There’s zero posturing or pretending with this character, and Davis’ gravity feeds the film’s. The clashes in “The Woman King” are simple on top: spears and machetes against horses and muskets. Underneath, it is General Nanisca’s haunted secret (a twist out of Shakespeare, or countless cultural folk tales) and her brutalized personal history that makes the movie mean something.

It is bracing, too, to see Dahomey reclaimed on screen and the Agojie triumphant, at least in the timeline of this story. (Wakanda and “Black Panther” owes much to this historical tribe.) For much of our history, Dahomey meant one thing in American entertainment: racist “African jungle” depictions of Black people for white amusement. The 1893 Chicago World’s Fair featured a Dahomey Village. “In Dahomey” (1903) starred Bert Williams in what many consider the first all-Black musical comedy. “Show Boat” (1927) opened Act 2 (the song was cut for the 1946 revival and has rarely been used since) with a gag tune, also titled “In Dahomey.”

“The Woman King” can’t make up for all that, of course. I suppose it’s a little dodgy to have this fine, fierce, beautifully acted movie end on a purely optimistic note. But this is commercial filmmaking, not documentary reality. Prince-Bythewood’s ripe, somewhat frustrating (and frustrated) career prior to this project spans a generation, everything from the supple “Love & Basketball” (2000) to last year’s undead-warrior Netflix diversion “The Old Guard.” In “The Woman King” she stretches out and works, hard, to keep a rangy script in dramatic balance. Even when subplots B or C threaten to overwhelm, her movie keeps its storytelling bearings.

I’d see it again just to see more of the brilliantly economical character created, off the page and before our eyes, by Davis. The role doesn’t dominate the narrative. It simply inhabits it, memorably.

‘The Woman King’ — 3.5 stars (out of 4)

MPAA rating: PG-13 (for sequences of strong violence, some disturbing material, thematic content, brief language and partial nudity)

How to watch: Premieres in theaters Sept. 15

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

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