Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: A Fun-Filled Fantasy Adventure

High fantasy is not a genre that gets a lot of theatrical love, especially in the current market where science fiction is dominating at the box office. When movies in this genre do come out, they tend not to be of the highest quality like last year’s The School of Good and Evil or Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves bucks this trend by telling a grounded and emotional family story within a fantasy world with many great comedic moments as well.

Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves follows Edgin (Chris Pine), Holga (Michelle Rodriguez), Simon (Justice Smith), and Doric (Sophia Lillis) as they have to break into a stronghold controlled by their former friend Forge (Hugh Grant) to save Edgin’s daughter and steal back a tablet that will allow Edgin to resurrect his wife. Helping Forge is a Red Wizard of Thay (Daisy Head) with ulterior motives involving ancient magic and necromancy. Regé-Jean Page and Chloe Coleman also star.

The marketing for this film does a major disservice because it goes out of its way to misrepresent the plot. The trailers (and tv spots) make it look like the story will feature some world-ending cataclysm brought about by the heroes doing something wrong for the wrong person. That still plays into the movie, however, that is not the overarching plot, and what the viewer follows over the course of the movie is a reasonably complex plot about a father trying to reconnect with his estranged daughter. That’s not to say that the stakes involving the Red Wizards of Thay aren’t high but they do kind of take a back seat to the more personal story for all the members of the cast.

The movie has a great comedic tone that is more or less exactly the tone one would want from a movie that comes from the Dungeons and Dragons franchise. While none of the explicit action sequences are undercut by the comedy, the comedy is still through the entire movie to create a consistent tone that does not undercut the emotion necessary for essential scenes. On top of that, a lot of the action is really well choreographed and thankfully this movie does not fall down the Black Adam hole where the third act is characterized by a fight where there is a faceless army that needs to be faced down in order to keep the heroes engaged while they fight the antagonist one-on-one. The final fight scene between the four heroes and the Red Wizard is some of the best action in a fantasy movie in a long time.

Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is one of the best fantasy movies in many years and has all the heart and comedy that one would want from this franchise. The effects are great and the sound mix is very impressive as well so it should be watched in a theater on the biggest screen available.

Final Rating: 9/10

Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves opens this Friday.