Despite a rocky first third, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is a delightful if somewhat unsurprising swords and sorcery film that balances the goofball antics of tabletop RPG playing and focused storytelling without sacrificing accessibility . It follows a ragtag group of adventurers who spend a little too long on their traumatic backstories as they try to right the wrongs of their past. Type of. That’s really beside the point. Despite all the marketing to save a world from evil and fight epic battles, this is the story of a family struggling to stay together about a father and his platonic partner trying to get back to their child.
It’s a tough start for Chris Pine’s Edgin and Michelle Rodriguez’s Holga. After spending two years in a panopticon-like ice prison, they eventually escape, only to return home to find Edgin’s child, Kira, who Holga also considers a daughter, missing. As Edgin and Holga trudge from classic Faerun location to location with little to no fanfare (but with a good amount of scenery shots), they can’t find their child. When they finally locate Kira, she falls into the clutches of the sneaky villain Forge (Hugh Grant) and an old enemy.
The only way to get them back is to steal them in the middle of a Blood and Bread Gladiator/Maze/Hunger Games event that Forge is running to make tons – and I mean bloody tons – of gold. Edgin and Holga travel around Faerun (again, very scenic, very beautiful) and assemble a team to help them along the way, including their old friend Simon the Sorcerer (Justice Smith), who doesn’t really believe in himself. and Doric, a tiefling druid who hates humans because of a deep personal betrayal. The immortal helps them too? -ish? Paladin Xenk (Rege-Jean Page), who has a mysterious connection to the Red Wizards.
Amidst daring plots, exciting fights, and flashbacks (like many flashbacks), directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley have put together a solid film. The comedy is a little rushed, but the jokes all hit the ground running, the characters mostly come together as charming iterations of classic D&D classes, and there’s not a bad performance from the group. Hugh Grant might be the only person you could object to for not doing his part, but he doesn’t have much to do besides drink spiezey Rizz and lie, so I’ll forgive him. Even the evil sorceress Sofina (Daisy Head) feels dynamic and convincingly nefarious, even if her motivation is just “destroy the city on behalf of my overlords,” which is… well, a lot of movies ignore a villain’s motivation in favor of the hero, but it heralds the deeply predictable end of the film.
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The storyline cuts off, everything else continues, the sets are pretty and use a kind of charming, usual medieval fantasy visual that anyone can recognize, and the use of both very good practical effects and seamless VFX ties the whole package into one pretty bow. It’s a simple watch, funny when it has to be, emotionally compromising when it can, and full of gags and the tiniest (so, so small) nod to D&D lore. Which is probably for the best! D&D lore is notoriously deep and sometimes contradictory. So referring to it in passing, or just allowing background moments to imply depth, keeps the film light and allows people to enjoy the very funny fight scenes and the absolute beauty of Page as he emerges for a glorious 30 minutes in Honor Among Thieves.
Image: Paramount Pictures
Maybe it’s meta, but one of my favorite parts of the film was how carefully the writers and directors considered all characters as ways in which players play the game. There are players who mean business and give their all, making the campaign their quest for personal wholeness. They only know half the rules, but they’re really invested. (That’s Edgin, by the way.) There’s the silent tank, who only speaks when he really needs to say something, who knows all the rules perfectly, and whenever you need someone to rule the fight, everyone’s waiting for his turn is. There are players who really want to be a magic user and don’t know exactly how to use magic slots. Gamers who have an ambiguous backstory but are definitely willing to get dramatic on the fly and just keep going until they understand how to play the game. And of course, the player who has trouble planning makes sure the DM gives the table a game that takes full advantage of their character, because of course this is the guy who insists on playing the paladin they want started playing in college and is at level 18 or so. It’s absurd, silly details to focus on, but I loved it. It felt like no matter how much of Dungeons & Dragons is in the film (which, to be honest, is very little), the film was still deeply invested in depicting what games are like.
My biggest problem with this film is that it’s so clearly a setup for the next campaign. Many character arcs remain at the precipice of a zenith, at least three storylines remain mysterious and open – they even branch out, and handsome men in cloaks hint at hidden depths we’ve only just begun to discover. Not all of these things need to be resolved, and in defense of the film, most films don’t resolve everything, but the sheer clumsiness of this particular narrative is deeply frustrating. Page’s Xenk plays a big part in this, as his unexplained connection to the Szass Tam calls for a sequel. Not to mention Tam doesn’t even appear in this movie! I want to see your contracts. I want to know how long these actors have been locked up.
All of this openness says that the point of this film isn’t to emulate a D&D game, or emulate anything in the fantasy genre at all. This film is about building a franchise. We always knew that was the goal, but it’s disappointing to see it presented so transparently. And, for the record, as a proof of concept, it succeeds. It’s a good movie! I laughed out loud several times! But it’s frustrating to watch a movie and know there will be more, dozens more according to Hasbro, all trying to fulfill honor among thieves. It’s just crap. I can imagine it now; Dungeons & Dragons: The Emerald Enclave; Rise of the Red Wizard; reign of death. I’ll take it upon myself to cover at least three more of these with no real guarantee that they’ll be anywhere near as good as this one.
Still, Honor Among Thieves is worth a visit to the cinemas. It is fun. It treats its characters like people, it treats its audience with respect, and despite the bitter aftertaste of franchise opportunities I hear rumbling around in my brain like pitch meeting hall, it’s a good story and makes all the rights to Dungeons & Dragons without getting lost in lore. With an unashamed reliance on narrative tropes, nestled between really solid action/comedy dialogue and thrillingly frenetic action sequences, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves does what it’s supposed to do: leave you wanting more.
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves hits theaters on March 31st.
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