Dun­geons & Drag­ons: Hon­our Among Thieves

Among his many crimes, Joss Whe­don is respon­si­ble for a seis­mic change in the style of dia­logue favoured in mod­ern fan­ta­sy film and tele­vi­sion. The quip­py, ​“so, that just hap­pened” speech pat­terns that have plagued the scripts of many a pro­duc­tion can be traced back to Buffy the Vam­pire Slay­er and Fire­fly – and while for a brief peri­od this snap­py sound was nov­el, when it became the de rigueur for­mu­la for Mar­vel movies and most Hol­ly­wood block­busters, the result was a world where films failed to take their own con­ceits seriously.

Gone were the days of the earnest fan­ta­sy yarn, with the likes of Lord of the Rings and Labyrinth – films which deliv­ered strange­ness with a straight face – but a dis­tant mem­o­ry. Every­thing was irony poi­soned, and char­ac­ters had to point out the absur­di­ty of their sit­u­a­tion every two min­utes, in a way that was almost as jar­ring as an actor look­ing straight into the cam­era and say­ing ​“Hey, isn’t this weird?!”

The inabil­i­ty for mod­ern fan­ta­sy to be deliv­ered with an ounce of sin­cer­i­ty seems at odds with IP like Dun­geons and Drag­ons – a role­play­ing game that, while absurd in its seem­ing­ly infi­nite capac­i­ty for chaos among its ded­i­cat­ed play­ers, has the weight of 50 years of pop cul­ture his­to­ry behind it, which per­haps deserves a mod­icum of rev­er­ence. After three fair­ly poor pre­vi­ous iter­a­tions, the task land­ed with Jonathan Gold­stein and John Fran­cis Daley, who pre­vi­ous­ly worked on the rather good board game com­e­dy-thriller Game Night.

Per­haps it’s a respect for the source mate­r­i­al that helps Dun­geons & Drag­ons: Hon­our Among Thieves (awful title, by the way) retain a sort of sin­cer­i­ty that’s been miss­ing from the genre. Although the script does have a zip­py, wise­crack­ing feel, there’s also an earnest­ness at play: the char­ac­ters embrace the strange­ness of their world with­out ever feel­ing the need to remark on it. In short, this is a film that is fun while also tak­ing its premise some­what seriously.

Adapt­ed from the role­play­ing game rather than incor­po­rat­ing that ele­ment into it, the plot fol­lows Edgin Darvis (Chris Pine), a for­mer man of hon­our turned job­bing thief, and his bar­bar­ian accom­plice Hol­ga Kil­go­re (Michelle Rodriguez) who, fol­low­ing an ambi­tious prison break, set out to find the for­mer accom­plices who betrayed them dur­ing a heist two years pri­or, so they can reunite with Edgin’s daugh­ter and, er, bring his wife back from the dead. As far as plots go, it’s stan­dard fare for the fan­ta­sy genre – fight­ing beasts, meet­ing colour­ful char­ac­ters, and learn­ing how to be an hon­ourable per­son – with no real ambi­tion on dis­play, but a sim­ple premise well-exe­cut­ed is often bet­ter than the alternative.

The cast have con­vic­tion too, and Pine in par­tic­u­lar gets a chance to flex his comedic mus­cles that are often over­looked. He’s well-matched with Rodriguez, even if she is essen­tial­ly play­ing her Fast & Furi­ous char­ac­ter with an axe instead of a Nis­san 240SX, and as an ensem­ble, the group mim­ics the dynam­ic of a real D&D group with their com­pli­men­ta­ry skill sets. The most enter­tain­ing ele­ment is prob­a­bly Hugh Grant’s luvvy con artist Forge Fitzwilliam – it’s a medieval rehash of his delight­ful turn in Padding­ton 2, but when it works this well, who can blame him for recy­cling a bit?

If there’s a stum­bling block, it’s the film’s slight­ly flat CGI. It would have been great to see more prac­ti­cal effects or pup­petry used to bring the mag­i­cal world to life – which also would have nod­ded to the DIY spir­it of the source mate­r­i­al. But the film seems aimed square­ly at a fam­i­ly audi­ence, and this isn’t dis­tract­ing enough to count as a cat­a­stroph­ic fail­ure, with the charis­ma of its cast enough to paper over the cracks, and some nifty stunt work a sol­id compromise.

Hol­ly­wood has always strug­gled to adapt games into films, and per­haps it’s a case of the bar being so low that any­thing that man­ages to clear it imme­di­ate­ly looks bet­ter by com­par­i­son, but Dun­geons & Drag­ons: Hon­our Amongst Thieves (seri­ous­ly, was there no bet­ter option for that title?) feels like sol­id evi­dence that the fan­ta­sy block­buster isn’t dead in the water. It’s pos­si­ble to cre­ate a charm­ing action epic that harks back to the likes of A Knight’s Tale and The Dark Crys­tal with­out feel­ing dat­ed, and the curse of sar­cas­tic Whe­do­nite dia­logue might have final­ly been lifted.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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