Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
Paramount PicturesDungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is the newest swing from big studios at making a full-fledged fantasy epic with some type of IP to back it all the way up to the bank. This was surprisingly successful as an attempt to do so. There is no comparison to the critically derided box-office failure of 2000’s Dungeons and Dragons, but it is nice to see such a genuine film born from the decades-old tabletop role-playing game.
This is a fun movie, with real actors, real sets and locations, real emotion, and earned humor throughout. Now, these should not necessarily be commendable traits, rather they should be expected. But, due to some of the output from competing franchises, this felt like a breath of fresh air.
Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves follows a band of men and women as they attempt to save the daughter of Edgin Darvis (Chris Pine). Along the way, they face many magical creatures and elements, some of which come straight from the game. A very well-paced film from beginning to end with a rather deep breadth of emotion at the core of its fantastical narrative. While the humor does come at a rather rapid pace the film as a whole is not afraid to settle down and let the quips take a backseat to some very fun action set pieces and a heart-warming story of finding family in the strangest places.
Now, overwhelming positives aside, when the humor does not work it falls flat very fast, very hard, and very awkwardly. This happens most often with Michelle Rodriguez's character Holga Kilgore. The very dry, self-serious nature of the character is written rather well for a majority of the runtime, but unfortunately, the acting prowess of Rodriguez is not on full display here as character acting is not necessarily one of her strongest characteristics. That isn't to say she doesn't hold a very important aspect of all of this on her shoulders, as she is the one who leads a strong majority of the action sequences in this film. Her commendable presence as an action star is on full display here with some rather impressive stunt work being done as a whole.
Ultimately, Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is a much better film than it probably would've been under a different set of hands, and for better or for worse, with the absolutely glowing sets of reviews this is receiving from audiences and critics alike there may be more high fantasy films flooding the market, box-office withstanding, and that could lead to a very exciting time for a film industry clawing its way back from a superhero movie glut.