‘The Bluff’ Review: A Forgettable Swashbuckling Revenge Tale

Originally tailor-made to star Zoe Saldaña and on Netflix, The Bluff is an underwhelming Pirate affair, with its bland story and characters leaving audiences wanting to get back to the action immediately. The Bluff follows retired buccaneer, Ercell “Bloody Mary” Bodden (Priyanka Chopra Jonas), who lives a quiet life in the Cayman Islands with her husband, T.H. (Ismael Cruz Cordova), son, Isaac (Vedanten Naidoo), and sister-in-law, Elizabeth (Safia Oakley-Green). The peacefulness of familial life is short-lived, as Bloody Mary’s old master, Captain Francisco Connor (Karl Urban), kidnaps her husband and launches a siege on their home to reclaim his stolen gold and get his revenge.

Without a doubt, the action sequences are the best part of The Bluff, as it is produced by the Russo Brothers’ production company, AGBO, in a similar fashion to the Extraction series on Netflix. While I don’t typically like the Russos’ work outside of their MCU affairs, they do know how to produce an entertaining action sequence. The fights displayed in this film have the same heightened sense of aggression we get from the Extraction films, but none of the long takes and excellent staging are present in those films. Also, unlike the Extraction films, a decent amount of this film has stretches with zero action, leaving audiences to bask in the predictable story we’ve all seen a thousand times.

Typically, with predictable action fanfare, you would get incredibly bombastic performances from the characters to keep the audience entertained during the slower moments, however the movie does the complete opposite as everyone in here is as flat as a board. Even Karl Urban, who is typically an incredible character actor, turns in a lousy performance as the vengeful villain whose accent slips in and out between each scene he is featured. His scenes with Chopra Jonas hold no weight or tension as they both seem bored out of their minds with the material. While she is excellent at bringing the physicality to the role, every scene that isn’t an action scene her acting stumbles. 

While this doesn’t come across as lazy and ridiculous as Prime Video’s other recent action films like last year’s G20, it manages to be less entertaining than something poorly made because this is a competently made film (aside from the awful CGI, woof) that offers no value of entertainment whatsoever. It’s a shame because audiences have wanted a new pirate film for ages, and as soon as I heard an R-rated one would be coming out and with this cast I was definitely intrigued. But the problem is even though this has a fresh pirate coat of paint on it, it is just as typical and bland as 90% of the other action fanfare we get on streaming. Maybe if it had a different cast and better action sequences to elevate this boring material it would have been better, but unfortunately, this film is what it’s title states: a bluff. 

The Bluff was directed by Frank E. Flowers and written by Joe Ballarini & Frank E. Flowers. The film stars Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Karl Urban, Safia Oakley-Green, Ismael Cruz Cordova, Temuera Morrison, Vedanten Naidoo, and David Field. 

The Bluff was released on Amazon Prime Video by Amazon MGM Studios on February 25.

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