According to the Wall Street Journal, A-list action stars such as Dwayne Johnson, Vin Diesel and Jason Statham are now asking for clauses in their movie contracts that ensure they never lose a fight and always look tough and strong on screen. ("According to producers and crew members on the [Fast & Furious] movies," the WSJ report read: “Mr. Statham, age 51, negotiated an agreement with the studio that limits how badly he can be beaten up on screen,” while Johnson supposedly “enlists producers, editors and fight coordinators to make sure he is always gives as good as he gets.)
It's pretty clear that Chris Pine doesn't have that kind of contractual requirement for his big budget eyewear. In movies like the Star Trek, Wonderwomanand now Dungeons & Dragons: honor among thievesPine has carved out a blockbuster niche playing the kind of roles other macho stars have abandoned: charming, self-effacing underdogs.
All those previously mentioned action heroes would have rejected Pine's Dungeons and Dragons character out of hand. His Edgin is technically a bard, but he's actually more of a schemer, and not particularly effective. You expect the main character of a movie with the title Dungeons and Dragons to walk through the middle with a sword or an axe. Instead, Edgin carries a lute slung over his shoulder where a weapon would normally be. Occasionally he even plays it - badly. Edgin barely throws a single punch Honor among thieves134 minutes, though he runs away from danger quite a bit.
It takes a lot of confidence to play this kind of 'hero', along with a lack of vanity that's rare among big stars. Pine never seems to want to laugh, and never seems to worry about getting confused or looking weak or silly. He also never seems alarmed or surprised by the strange monsters, wizards or beasts he encounters. And why would he? This is Dungeons and Dragonswhere strange monsters, wizards and beasts are commonplace.
That, along with Pine's performance, are the most refreshing things Honor among thieves, a movie that performed better than I expected. It succeeds in not only the adventure of the Dungeons and Dragons role-playing, but also the sense of camaraderie that the game evokes, as it is usually played by groups of close friends who meet regularly for months or even years to complete a campaign. In a relatively short and brisk 134 minutes, Honor among thieves brings together a whimsical group of villains, warriors, wizards and shapeshifters and sets them on an epic quest to rescue a fair maiden, save an endangered kingdom, and crack plenty of dry pranks.
At the beginning of the film, Edgin and his constant companion, the barbarian Holga (Michelle Rodriguez), are imprisoned for a botched robbery. Years earlier, Edgin's wife had been murdered by a Red Wizard, forcing him to stop working as Harper (actually a D.&D agent) and become a thief to take care of his daughter Kira (Chloe Coleman). Edgin assembled a gang of thugs, including a bumbling wizard named Simon (Justice Smith) and the scheming con artist Forge (Hugh Grant), and they learned of a magical tablet that could revive his lost love. Edgin and Holga botched the theft of the tablet and ended up in jail; when they finally get free, they discover that Kira has been taken in by a corrupt nobleman. So they must reconnect with their old crew - and recruit some new allies, like the body-altering Doric (Sophia Lillis) and the brave paladin Xenk (Regé-Jean Page) - to rescue her.
The path to free Kira is not a straight line; this intrepid party must search for specific artifacts to aid their odyssey and - spoiler alert - they end up in at least one dungeon where - extra spoiler alert - they meet a dragon. But in this and other scenes, directors/co-writers Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley undermine our assumptions about how these encounters should and will play out. There have been a lot of dragons in movies and TV over the years, but Honor among thieves introduces a legitimately new one that at least I hadn't seen before.
Goldstein and Daley also draw on the history of Dungeons and Dragons to fill their list with loads of weird creatures, interesting locations, and surreal imagery; almost every scene has something new to gawk at and think about. And the effects are generally better than average for Hollywood blockbusters, which today all too often look like they were shot in one big green room with backgrounds later filled in by artists under grueling deadlines. Honor among thieves takes its characters throughout the fantasy realm, from scenic beaches to subterranean caverns and a bustling castle, and each feels like a separate and fully realized place.
I played alone Dungeons and Dragons a handful of times in my life, so I'm not an authority on the game by any means. But the times I did play D&D closely mimicked the atmosphere of Honor among thieves: Great adventure punctuated by dorky humour. Dorks enjoy a good quest for treasure or glory, but also enjoy acknowledging common narrative tropes and clichés. No one around the table where I played mine D&D games was almost as handsome as Chris Pine. But like his character, we lost a lot of battles and still kept playing. That's what real heroes do.
JUDGEMENT: 7/10
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