“The Bluff” has a few things to recommend it: a home-invasion thriller set on a Caribbean island and starring Priyanka Chopra Jonas as a cutlass-wielding, bomb-hurling badass with a past. Chopra plays Ercell, a resourceful mother under siege from the bounty-hunting pirate Captain Connor (Karl Urban), who takes Ercell’s husband T.H. Bodden (Ismael Cruz Cordova) hostage and searches their family’s house for Bodden’s hidden stash of gold coins. Now Ercell must defend herself and her fellow residents of Cayman Brac from Connor and his murderous crew, who strike so much fear in Ercell’s fellow islanders that they vanish for most of the movie.
Produced by the Russo siblings (including sister Angela Russo-Otstot), distributed by Amazon, and both written and directed by relative neophyte Frank E. Flowers (“Haven”), “The Bluff” is a B-movie at heart despite also being over-produced and under-developed, too.
Don’t get me wrong, the movie’s focus on quippy one-liners and busy, but unfocused action scenes is noted and occasionally appreciated. The concluding sword fight also mostly lands, and so do a couple of the more high-concept and effect-driven mini-climaxes scattered throughout the movie. Still, you’re bound to be disappointed by “The Bluff” if you’re hoping to see its dueling stars do more than scowl and strike various poses.
Set in 1846, “The Bluff” begins with on-screen text that explains, “The era of pirates on the Caribbean Sea is dying.” Connor did not get this helpful note, so he starts by raiding Bodden’s ship and then heads straight for Cayman Brac. Ercell is ready to receive Connor’s men and to protect her unwitting (and mostly hapless) children, Issac (Vedanten Naidoo) and Elizabeth (Safia Oakley-Green). A flashy but uninspired home-invasion sequence is presented in a bravura single-take action set piece, one that, unfortunately, lacks the formal rigor and stylistic elegance of the many formulaic show-stoppers it draws inspiration from.
This early scene is occasionally effective since the filmmakers clearly spent a little money on stuntwork. It’s also sparsely peppered with location- and period-specific details, like the conch shell that Ercell uses to brain one black-shroud-clad pirate. Sometimes she works a little local color into her dialogue, too, like when she advises Elizabeth to “follow the trail of the banana orchids to the mangroves towards the bluff.”
A more patient or human-scaled drama might have made that line stick. But “The Bluff,” which was co-scripted by Flowers and Joe Ballarini, inexpertly tries to make you root for a character who’s mainly convincing because she’s constantly saying what you might want a character like her to say.
Defiant and capable, Ercell has a line for every cool move at her disposal, like when she arms kindly Pastor Bradley (David Field) and boasts, after he observes that “With faith, anything is possible,” that “Now you have faith and a flintlock.” It’s a fine enough zinger, but there’s too much that sounds exactly like it, and everything else about Chopra’s role seems overlooked by comparison. She also rarely appears to be reacting, let alone physically standing in front of her screen partners, a distracting problem that also hampers Urban’s performance.
Presumably Urban’s go-to gestures—shoulder swivels and hip dips, as well as an arsenal of faraway stares that are always up and to the side of whoever’s in front of him—are meant to define Connor with the same kind of instantly accessible swagger as Ercell’s declarative chest-pumping. It’s still hard to suspend one’s disbelief when she advises her family from off-camera that, “Tonight you become soldiers. Distract. Defend. Destroy.” Instead of enjoying that cheesy, but satisfying declaration, I was left wondering: why wasn’t Chopra presented in a close-up or at least from somewhere on-camera when she’s speaking?
Watching “The Bluff” is a bit like watching an expensive-looking fan fiction adaptation since it’s usually as schematic and lifeless as a live-action story outline, and only really comes to life when its star co-leads get to roam around on-screen, giving rare proof that they can act if they’re allowed. Of course, both Chopra and Urban can smolder like the best of them, but they’re too often saddled with reams of desperate-to-please dialogue, so their characters are never more suggestive than a few scattered moments.
Flowers and his collaborators have a lot of the right ideas, but not enough craftsmanship or genre savvy to make it more than a missed opportunity. The ending promises a sequel, because of course it does, but I’d still encourage any curious readers to watch this first installment on the off chance that the filmmakers can accomplish more during their second go-around. “The Bluff” exemplifies a very enjoyable type of nostalgia-bait, even if it’s never as good as its elevator pitch.
