‘The Bluff’ Movie Review: Priyanka Chopra Jonas Stars In A Gory and Generic Pirate Actioner

It takes a considerable amount of skill to make big-budget action movies — in this case, a period pirate swashbuckler — that are neither great nor terrible. How is it possible to be so safe when the scale is lavish and the stakes are high? How is it possible to be so deliberately sterile and precisely average when the resources are limitless? But one of the magic tricks of this decade has been the way streaming platforms have legitimised the middling-and-forgettable genre. Heck, it’s almost an art form. “Produced by the Russo brothers” is usually a tell, and The Bluff is another bullseye for ambient action (I vowed to get through this review without using the word “algorithmic”). The Bluff has some texture, a pinch of personality, bone-crunching violence and gore, a spirited lead even, yet I can’t remember a single moment right now. And it’s been only 8 minutes since the end credits rolled. I suppose that’s a win for the content ecosystem.

The film stars Priyanka Chopra Jonas as Ercell Bodden, a template action-hero character whose past returns to haunt — and reactivate — her. It’s 1846, a post-Pirates-of-the-Caribbean era of sorts, and Ercell waits for her sailor husband to return from a trip while living a ‘normal’ life with her son and sister-in-law on a tranquil Caribbean island. You know what happens when things are too quiet in Hollywood movies set in exotic places. All hell breaks loose when Captain Connor (Karl Urban), a villainous pirate, invades the utopian paradise in search of missing gold; one of his hostages is Ercell’s husband. In one fell swoop (I wanted to sound smart here — I mean over the course of a single action sequence), we see Ercell transform from a hapless damsel in distress to a marauding femme fatale. She is revealed to be a former pirate herself, who knows the language of her oppressors and shares some bloody history with Connor himself. Which is to say: they messed with the wrong housewife. After wreaking havoc on her unsuspecting captors, Ercell goes on the run with her family, all the while barrelling towards that fateful reunion with Captain Connor. When the moment comes, there’s not enough sexual or textual tension; the specifics remain vague, and the prospect of a psychopathic ex is all but erased. All that matters is: Connor is bad and Ercell quit the line before getting (too) bad.

It’s a familiar narrative (if not for my vow, I’d say “algorithmically familiar”), even if it offers Chopra Jonas the chance to impose her physicality on a culturally generic role. There are two ways to look at the performance. From a Bollywood-crossover-talent point of view, it’s impressive how she commits to a character that’s more grunt than dialogue, more body than heart, more survivor than speaker. You might say the resilience feels a bit lived-in, particularly given her career arc in the last decade. From the Hollywood-formula point of view, though, it’s adequate at best. There’s nothing in there that makes Ercell shine due to the performer’s roots or a curious script. But I’ve seen such roles go woefully wrong — I’m looking at you, Gal Gadot — so credit where it’s due. It’s that sweet spot between not fitting in and not standing out. It doesn’t help that the movie is simply interested in unfolding; entertainment is subjective. There are a few ambitious combat sequences, but it’s par for the course for a direct-to-streaming film where punchy action details and a kinetic cinematic language can barely be identified. I did enjoy a grinning crocodile during a swamp chase, though. I’m surprised there were no sharks and not enough aquatic spectacle. It’s that rare land-heavy pirate saga; Jaws will not be pleased.

At one point, Ercell stops to educate her son when he romanticises the baddies and equates them with the colourful figures in the books he’s read. “Real pirates are murderers, not heroes,” she snaps. She informs him that Connor was a bloodthirsty coloniser for the East India Company: the worst of them walk-the-plankers. It’s almost like she’s scolding him for idolising someone like Johnny Depp’s tipsy Captain Jack Sparrow. I can imagine the poor kid growing up to be a centrist who demonises an entire community because his mother was once trying to vindicate herself. It might be the 1840s, but it could be the 2020s and the mother-son conversation would not be too different (except perhaps the mom telling the kid that ‘pirating films’ on the Internet is wrong). When it’s not allowing the viewer to step away and do some chores while gearing through elaborately plain fun, The Bluff is concerned about our relationship with literary fantasies and false truths. But thank heavens for harmless and algorithmic actioners. Voices are only for cowards.