Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023) Review

Time: 134 Minutes
Age Rating: M – Violence, offensive language & horror
Cast:
Chris Pine as Edgin Darvis
Michelle Rodriguez as Holga Kilgore
Regé-Jean Page as Xenk Yendar
Justice Smith as Simon Aumar
Sophia Lillis as Doric
Hugh Grant as Forge Fitzwilliam
Chloe Coleman as Kira Darvis
Daisy Head as Sofina
Director: Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley

A charming thief and a band of unlikely adventurers embark on an epic quest to retrieve a long lost relic, but their charming adventure goes dangerously awry when they run afoul of the wrong people.

I’m not familiar with Dungeons & Dragons, I never played it, but I definitely heard about it. The last attempt at making a movie based on the popular tabletop roleplaying game was back in 2000, and from what I heard it was to less than stellar results. 23 years later however, they are giving it another go. Despite a cast led by Chris Pine and being helmed by the writers and directors of the underrated Game Night, I had my reservations going into Honor Among Thieves. The trailers weren’t the best and made it look like a generic fantasy action comedy with typical MCU style quips. However, it turned out to be one of the more surprising movies from this year.

As someone who hasn’t played Dungeons & Dragons, I can’t speak with high creditability as to how accurately it captures the game, but from my limited knowledge, the movie did feel like a D&D game. The plot really isn’t anything special, so it is just as well that the writing is as great as it was. The story is cliché and predictable but is nonetheless well handled. It plays like an old fashioned fantasy adventure and strikes the perfect tone. It is fully aware of the genre it is in and doesn’t take itself so seriously, and its quite charming. There’s a lot of good and clever humour, and most of the jokes land. High fantasy action comedies are hard to pull off, but Honor Among Thieves does a wonderful job at it. For those who have seen Game Night, it is more in line with that movie than you would initially think, especially with the comedy. Despite all that, there are some surprising emotional story beats and character development that play at the right level, it’s not too serious and retains the self-awareness, but is genuine and earnest enough for you to care about the characters and what’s going on. With this being a fantasy movie, there’s a lot of worldbuilding and plenty of backstories given to characters, items and fantasy races, which is probably why the end film is 2 hours and 14 minutes long. The movie entertained me from beginning to end, but perhaps they could’ve cut down a little on the exposition.

So much of the movie is helped by the great and likable cast of characters, who have really good chemistry together and help to sell the comedy. You can tell that everyone was having a lot of fun making it. The central band of characters in Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Justice Smith and Sophia Lillis are great and fun to watch. Regé-Jean Page is a standout and steals the scenes he’s in, I’d watch a whole spin off movie focussing on his character. The villains really are pretty generic, but that’s fine for this story. Still, it helps that one of the villains played by Hugh Grant is very entertaining and funny in his scenes, even if he’s not in the movie as much as you’d like.

John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein directed this well. The visuals are good with some very nice scenery and good sets. There was a surprising number of practical effects, including animatronics. Occasionally the CGI can look really off, but that is easy to look past, and it looks really good for the most part. The action is also strong, whether it be smaller scale fights between Michelle Rodriguez and multiple people at the same time, or much larger set pieces involving dragons. There’s a lot of creativity in these scenes, especially when it comes to the camera movements. Lorne Balfe’s score is also great and fits the movie and its tone really well.  

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is a surprisingly fun, cleverly written and entertaining fantasy action comedy, with great and likeable performances and characters. I wouldn’t mind if we got more of these movies, whether it continues the story of these characters or focus on a different set of characters in the universe. Even if you were turned off by the trailers, I think Honor Among Thieves is well worth checking out, especially in a cinema with a crowd.

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The Gray Man (2022) Review

Time: 129 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence, offensive language & cruelty
Cast:
Ryan Gosling as “Sierra Six”
Chris Evans as Lloyd Hansen
Ana de Armas as Dani Miranda
Jessica Henwick as Suzanne Brewer
Regé-Jean Page as Denny Carmichael
Wagner Moura as Laszlo Sosa
Julia Butters as Claire Fitzroy
Dhanush as “Lone Wolf”
Alfre Woodard as Margaret Cahill
Billy Bob Thornton as Donald Fitzroy
Director: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo

When the CIA’s top asset — his identity known to no one — uncovers agency secrets, he triggers a global hunt by assassins set loose by his ex-colleague.

I knew of The Gray Man as it was coming up to its release date, one of the newest movies from the Russo Brothers post Avengers: Endgame. It’s an action spy film with a massive cast including Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans and Ana de Armas. The movie looked like standard Netflix fare, but I went into it open minded; I found it passable.

The writing is a mixed bag to say the least. The Gray Man has a generic spy plot and as such it falls into many annoying cliches of the genre. I guess it is fine, but at a certain point the story stops mattering, as there’s a lot more importance placed on the set pieces. You kind of forget what the initial plot setup was by the third act. It is also hard to care about what’s going on despite the script’s best attempts. The characters aren’t that interesting, the only one who is remotely developed is Ryan Gosling’s protagonist. It makes an effort to make the character played by Julia Butters the heart and soul of the film, mainly with Gosling’s connection with her, but it feels lifeless and obligatory. The humour for the most part didn’t work, with some very dry jokes. The pacing is generally okay, but there is a section which has an extended flashback and while I get the reason for that section, it really halts the plot while it conveys the information. I get the feeling that the movie would’ve worked more if it came out in the 90s. As it is released today, its missing the charm that a movie like that might have. Not helping matters is the ending not feeling fully resolved, and its very clear that they were already intending to make sequels to this.

There is a massively talented cast here and while they are generally decent, none of them are doing great work. Ryan Gosling was the standout as the titular Gray Man. It’s certainly nowhere close to being one of Gosling’s best work by any means. However, he was pretty good with what he was given, it certainly helps that he’s the only character with any form of backstory or development. He was also quite convincing during the action scenes. Chris Evans plays a psychopathic ex-spy sent after Gosling in a rare villain role; it’s the type of role that John Travolta would’ve played in the 90s like Broken Arrow or Face/Off. It seems that Evans is a little miscast, even though he has played darker more villainous characters in other movies and done well at them. I think the problem is that the character is written quite generic, despite the movie deliberately showing how crazy he is. For this character to work, it would’ve required an actor who could deliver a certain kind of crazy to elevate it, unfortunately Evans is not that. For what its worth, at least it looks like he’s having fun and hams it up. It’s just a shame that despite the movie building up the concept of the two facing off, the two actors don’t share that much screentime. The supporting cast are fairly underutilised including Ana de Armas, Jessica Henwick, Rege Jean-Page, Alfre Woodard, Billy Bob Thornton and Julia Butters, but they are okay in their roles.

The Russo Brothers have delivered better in their previous movies, their work here is just fine. For a 200 million dollar budget movie, it could’ve been so much more. The movie is generally shot okay, but it can also look a bit bland visually. The action set pieces are nice and chaotic, however the cuts really take away from it. There are lots of drone shots, its fine but probably not as good as in other movies. It especially doesn’t help that earlier in the year, Michael Bay’s Ambulance utilised drone footage in a more exciting way. The Gray Man uses it an attempt to be flashy but ultimately it was pointless.

The Gray Man is a fairly entertaining yet forgettable spy movie, which is only memorable for the actors in it. As far as Netflix action movies go, it is on the better end but considering some of their other films, that isn’t saying a lot. Its okay. but you wouldn’t be missing much if you didn’t watch it, a shame considering the talent working in the movie.