Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Amongst Thieves

 

Image credit: Reddit

So, given how passionately and fan-girlily I gush about movies, and my love of all things fantasy, it should really come as no surprise that, when I’m not writing in my free time, I’m playing Dungeons & Dragons. I’ve been playing now for about 5 years, playing and DMing (dungeon-mastering) so when I heard that there was an upcoming film about it, you’d better believe I made plans to see it.

Tuesday night saw a friend and I at the cinemas ready to try and guess how much cool action and devasting drama was caused by natural 20s and 1s.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Amongst Thieves tells the story of a charismatic bardic rogue named Edgin (Chris Pine) and his close friend Holga (Michelle Rodriguez) who escape from prison to recover a lost relic and retrieve Edgin’s daughter Kira from an old friend. However, disaster strikes when Forge (Hugh Grant) double-crosses his old friends, refusing to let Kira go with them. Through some sleuthing, the two quickly learn that Forge is in league with the evil Red Wizards, who are hell-bent on creating an army of the dead. In order save Kira and retrieve the sacred relic from their botched quest that landed them in prison in the first place, Edgin and Holga must get the old mismatched and misguided team back together to perform one more, grand heist.

This is just a fun, dumb movie, perfect for a night when you’re tired and don’t want to think through anything. A stock-standard quest narrative mixed with the refreshingly dumb humour and chaos that often comes out of a typical D&D session, there’s not much more to be said.

The characters are all very fun, each with their own little quirky personality traits and I do have to give a special shout-out to the CGI wizards who brought a great number of beloved D&D monsters to life, including the owlbear, the displacer beast, and (of course), the mimic. In all honesty, the movie kind of belonged the special effects sages behind the curtain. Between the fantastic realisation of epic monsters and the brilliant, and often hilarious, execution of classic spells, the film is very much a special effects movie.

Image credit: movieweb.com

However, the performances were all completely lovely and I found it particularly refreshing to have a central ‘villain’ who wasn’t so much malevolent or villainous, just smarmy and a selfish arse. And of course, Hugh Grant does the role perfectly.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Amongst Thieves is just a load of fun. It’s a delightful fantasy romp packed with humour that is just dumb and off-centre enough to be refreshing and really enjoyable. If you’re a fan of D&D or just like fantasy movies, I’d recommend this.

Director: John Francis Daley & Jonathan Goldstein (2023)

Cast: Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Rege-Jean Page, Justin Smith, Sophia Lillis, Chloe Coleman, Daisy Head, Hugh Grant, & Bradley Cooper