Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is a fantasy adventure/heist comedy inspired by the tabletop RPG. The film opens on Edgin(Chris Pine) and Holga(Michelle Rodriguez) in a prison, at their parole hearing Edgin provides exposition in a fun, fast paced, flashback sequence- his wife was killed, he met Holga who helped him raise his daughter, in order to make ends meat they formed a little thieving band along with Forge(Hugh Grant), Simon(Justice Smith), and Sofina(Daisy Head) and were busted on a questionable job, hence the prison time. They have to re-group in order to right the wrong.
The cast is stacked with talent and it is clear they all relish the occasionally sincere, mostly over-the-top, and consistently comedic tone. Pine brings all his unblemished movie star charm to the role and it's a delight, he functions kind of as the main character and as the fulcrum of the narrative but each character gets an emotional moment or two as well as a chance to shine with their particular character's ability. It's an incredible balancing act. Rodriquez is always a delight and it's great to see her in a genre picture here. Grant continues his late career renaissance and is delicious as the immoral avaricious heavy. Smith is wonderful, emotional, funny, present, night-and-day from his other big budget outing Detective Pikachu. Head is a great creepy wizard, Sophia Lillis as Doric comes in a bit later but is equally great, the same goes for Regé-Jean Page as Xenk. It's just a wonderful cast who all know what they're doing, have great chemistry, don't take themselves too seriously and take the script serious enough to make it sing. It's a great time.
Visually the film is rich with some nice actual locations, sets, and decent green screen work to make the world feel real and tactile and when the inevitable big CG action sequence comes at the end all the effort to integrate the visuals(and the grounded performance) work together to make it really pay off. The costuming is absolutely exquisite and the music transportive(some songs even diegetic from Pine's bard). Overall the production is just incredibly well considered, fully formed, and effective.
A fair amount of laughs, a thrilling adventure, and a stellar cast come together to make a film way better than the clunky title indicates.
Currently in theaters, coming soon to VOD.
Don't Miss It.
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