Score: 3 / 5
We're all pretty familiar now with films adapted from video games, but how do you adapt a role-playing game? As co-writers and co-directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley (and co-writer Michael Gilio) capably demonstrate in Dungeons & Dragons, it's not all that different. You choose a specific story to tell, first off, and if it's original, so much the better. Of course you target the already existing fan base, and sprinkle in healthy doses of fan service in terms of insider knowledge and Easter eggs. You also need to be appealing to potential new fans, which can be done through casting choices, narrative accessibility, and marketing that doesn't alienate those unfamiliar with the material. Honor Among Thieves, a title which suggests Paramount's hopes for a new franchise, does these things.
While this is a big-budget, big-screen fantasy adventure in every sense of those words, and as such should be seen on the silver screen, I confess myself occasionally lost while watching. Not lost in that I couldn't follow the story, but lost because I'm pretty unfamiliar with the IP, and so the endless fantasy jargon used tended to slide in one ear and out the other. Seeing it with subtitles would have been ideal, as I wasn't always sure about the titles used (bard, paladin, rogue, druid, barbarian) or proper nouns (names and places are not obvious or familiar). Even when I did catch these elements, their significance often escaped me. Some of this may have been the result of sound editing, which often reduced key dialogue to indiscernible garble.
Without these, though, the film is still a delightful romp, one that intangibly conveys the sense that it is making itself up as we go along, much like the real game. The main character, a bard named Edgin (Chris Pine) whose wife was murdered, takes his daughter and they become thieves with a ragtag troupe including Holga (Michelle Rodriguez) and Forge Fitzwilliam (Hugh Grant), the latter of whom betrays them with his secret accomplice, a demonic Red Wizard named Sofina. After breaking out of prison, Edgin and Holga embark on a quest to build a new team, rescue Edgin's daughter, and save the land from Forge and Sofina, who want to rule with the power of a zombie army. It's a lot, and while the apparently unfocused narrative wasn't to my liking, I see how it pays homage to the wink-and-nod creativity of the game on which it is based.
To be honest, the whole experience made me feel a bit high. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but between a talking corpse answering questions not unlike the bridge-keeper in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a "fluffy" red dragon too big for its enclosure, and the generally frenetic CGI action sequences, I have a hard time now remembering what all happened in this bloated, overstuffed funhouse ride. For example, the undeniably beautiful Regé-Jean Page shows up, and I cannot recall who he played, why he was there, or what all he did. And I don't think that's entirely my fault. Even a bit of breathing room for the film, maybe via a narrator, to do some basic world-building would have helped me a lot. Then again, maybe I just need to see it with subtitles.
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