Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves 4K 2023 Ultra HD 2160p

Once upon a time, former Harper Egin Davis (Chris Pine) teamed up with barbarian Holga Kilgore (Michelle Rodriguez), hapless magician Simon Omar (Justice Smith) and con man Farage Fitzwilliam (Hugh Grant) to make money by stealing together. The team wasn't the most balanced, but things were going great, no one went hungry, and the accomplices lived their lives to the fullest. But only until they decided to steal the Resurrection Tablet to bring Darvis' dead wife back to life. The heist didn't go according to plan. As a result, Egin and Holga were sent to penal servitude, Omar was forced to wander the countryside and engage in petty pickpocketing, but Fitzwilliam, with the tablet and all the loot, became Lord of Neverwinter. Years later, Darvis and Kilgore escaped, and that's when it was time for Fitzwilliam to pay his debts. He was in no hurry to repay, however, and even sentenced his former companions to death, but they escaped and began preparations for another, not so friendly, visit to the traitor's chambers.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves 4K Review
Once upon a time, former Harper Egin Davis (Chris Pine) teamed up with barbarian Holga Kilgore (Michelle Rodriguez), hapless magician Simon Omar (Justice Smith) and con man Farage Fitzwilliam (Hugh Grant) to make money by stealing together. The team wasn't the most balanced, but things were going great, no one went hungry, and the accomplices lived their lives to the fullest. But only until they decided to steal the Resurrection Tablet to bring Darvis' dead wife back to life. The heist didn't go according to plan. As a result, Egin and Holga were sent to penal servitude, Omar was forced to wander the countryside and engage in petty pickpocketing, but Fitzwilliam, with the tablet and all the loot, became Lord of Neverwinter. Years later, Darvis and Kilgore escaped, and that's when it was time for Fitzwilliam to pay his debts. He was in no hurry to pay, however, and even sentenced his former companions to death, but they escaped and began preparations for the next, not so friendly, visit to the traitor's chambers.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves" is based on Dungeons & Dragons, aka D&D, the same board game played by the characters of "A Very Strange Thing. You often have to play with a pen and an outline, and the instructions are as big as all those outlines put together, so it's clearly not an activity for the faint of heart. "Honor Among Thieves" is not the first attempt to bring the game's lore to the screen, the previous three - in 2000, 2005 and 2012 - were all failures to varying degrees, the more unexpected is the 2023 film - gripping from the very first minute, dynamic, fun, not once sagging in more than two hours of running time.

The fantasy Middle Ages captivates from the very first scenes: there are dwarves, the most incredible mixtures of animals (an owl bear for one), and wizards and warlocks, which are not the same thing - it's hard to take your eyes off. As a separate kind of fantastical creature, we can mention Hugh Grant, as if he had stayed as Fletcher from "Gentlemen" or Greg Simmonds from "Operation Fortune". Chris Pine, perhaps not the most charismatic actor of the generation (Tom Hardy and Jake Gyllenhaal are somewhere around, for example), is not far behind, but here he just blossoms. The rest of the on-screen partners are more of a wannabe type, but for a comedy fantasy based on a boardgame, the two actors who put out are more than enough.

The directorial duo of Jonathan M. Goldstein and John Francis Daly don't smother the audience with rules or tedious backstories (the most impressive flashback is shown even before the credits and runs exactly five minutes - perfect), but immediately immerses the audience in a series of chases and battles. The characters always have a clearly defined goal, towards which they make their way through a medley of various fairy tale creatures. Besides the authors have great sense of humor: only Bradley Cooper's runt of the mill house husband would drive you crazy, but there are more such episodes in the film and it seems impossible to get bored at such density of fun and action.

Despite the fact that the project had been in development since 2013, changed several potential directors and lead actors, and the script was rewritten several times, the result was a solid piece of work that was more than friendly to both the untrained viewer and, judging by the reviews, to fans of the game. The film was ready as early as the first half of 2021, but first due to the pandemic, and then for commercial reasons, the release was postponed until March-April 2023. Since February 2022, a series from Paramount+ has been in development, with Rawson Marshall Thurber, the director of Red Notice and several other films with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, announced as showrunner. Not the most reassuring candidacy, though, for "Honor Among Thieves" too, few people expected anything outstanding from it, and it turned out to be a film that is at least as good as "The Glass Onion" in terms of audience potential. In better circumstances, it would have been shown on TNT or STS every few months, and it would have gradually stuck in your memory as a modern classic of family adventure cinema. Daly and Goldstein are diplomatically avoiding questions about a full-length sequel, but if the studio is satisfied with the box office, there's no doubt that we'll see a sequel in a few years.