'Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves' Review: Chris Pine Anchors a Buoyant and Accessible Adaptation

'Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves' Review: Chris Pine Anchors a Buoyant and Accessible Adaptation,Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez star in Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley highly anticipated 'Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.'

‘Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’ Review: Chris Pine Anchors a Buoyant and Accessible Adaptation

‘Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’Courtesy of Paramount Pictures

We start with a dungeon buried under layers of snow. The camera takes in the frosty landscape; a blizzard blurs our vision. We hear the clank of metal chains meeting concrete floors before seeing the dour-looking figure being ushered into a cell. He is confident — cocky, even — about his new mates. A smooth-faced man with searching blue eyes knits a sweater in one corner. A scruffy woman, wearing a perpetual frown, inhales a potato in the other. Arrogance and unfamiliarity make for a deadly combo. When the new cellmate says the wrong thing, his head swiftly hits the concrete. Quite the brutal opening for a film that’s ultimately such a jovial adventure.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

The Bottom LineA good time for D&D know-it-alls and novices alike.Venue: SXSW Film Festival (Headliners)
Release date: Friday, March 31
Cast: Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Hugh Grant, Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith
Directors: Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley
Screenwriters: Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Daley, Michael GilioRated PG-13,2 hours 14 minutes

The lore surrounding Dungeons & Dragons film adaptations is outmatched only by the lore surrounding the game itself. Developed in the early 1970s by Gary Gyax and Dave Arneson, Dungeons & Dragons’ commercial success inaugurated modern role-playing games. It also influenced a generation of creators. Jon Favreau told the Los Angeles Times in 2008 that it strengthened his imagination and storytelling abilities. Ta-Nehisi Coates has written about how D&D taught him about language. And various figures in Hollywood, including a showrunner for HBO’s Game of Thrones, have cited the importance of the game to their creative lives.

Early attempts to translate the magic of the tabletop game to the screen flopped (see Courtney Solomon’s 2000 Dungeons & Dragons), but Goldstein and Daley were bold enough to try again. Their efforts will surely meet a better fate than their predecessors’. This version of Dungeons & Dragons not only checks the boxes of a satisfying studio blockbuster; it arrives at a cultural moment that embraces — even fiends for — the epic fantasy adventure.

In the spirit of the game, Goldstein and Daley revel in the specificities of their world. They round out the personalities of their characters, pack their screenplay (written with Michael Gilio) with zingy one-liners and cleverly timed asides, and calibrate the action sequences so they rarely feel auxiliary to the narrative. A sense of play pulses through the film, which, with its bracing special effects, detailed production design and propulsive music, seems determined to activate viewer imaginations.

We meet the hopeful bard Edgin (Chris Pine) and his best friend Holga (Michelle Rodriguez), a reserved barbarian, near the end of their second year in prison. They are up for pardon, which means they must argue their case against a council. Edgin’s appeal lays the ground for the necessary backstory; through his florid tale (he’s a bard after all), we learn about his daughter Kira (played by Chloe Coleman), his dead wife, how he and Holga met and teamed up to commit petty theft, and how their last heist went awry.

They manage to get out of prison — though not in the way you might expect — and are soon off to reunite with Kira and their friends in Neverwinter. The city they come upon is markedly different from the one they left two years ago. Their friend Forge (Hugh Grant), whom Edgin tasked with caring for Kira in his absence, now rules the land. And Kira doesn’t trust her father, who she thinks abandoned her for untold riches. Edgin can’t believe his fate, and suspects that more sinister forces are afoot in this new world order.

He’s right. But his determination to figure out what’s wrong in Neverwinter isn’t purely selfless. Edgin wants to regain his daughter’s trust and revive his wife, whose tragic death still haunts him, with a rare magical relic. He and Holga recruit Simon (Justice Smith), a sorcerer with low self-esteem, and Doric, a druid who hates humans, to join their rag-tag crew. Later they team up with Xenk (played by Regé-Jean Page).

The actors who embody these wacky heroes and villains are the heart of Dungeons & Dragons: Their performances are lively, robust and well-judged. Pine and Rodriguez make for a particularly enjoyable duo as they volley light jabs and break the tensest moments with their teasing asides. Even as they repeat blunders and missteps, these adventurers are worth rooting for.

The drawback of a film having as good a time with itself as Dungeons & Dragons is in the narrative, which becomes too baggy and drags in the middle. As the journey grows more treacherous, the group’s adventures resemble a blur of swords piercing flesh and dragons hunting for their next meal. Edgin’s quippy revelations don’t land as sharply. The confrontations exhaust. Holga’s comments begin to sound one-note, and patience wears thin with Simon’s diffidence and Doric’s indifference. Those more tapped into the world of the game might not share the same feelings, but the film could lose some neophytes at this point.

Thankfully, the threat of the closing credits enlivens Dungeons & Dragons’ third act. It’s an energetic, if predictable, conclusion that restores our faith and confidence in Goldstein and Daly’s vision.