The Bluff review (2026)

The Bluff isn’t a pirate movie inspired by a Disney ride.

It’s less glam Jack Sparrow pirate comedy and more Kill Bill: The Pirate Cut. At least for a few installments, Pirates of the Caribbean was an entertaining series while The Bluff proves to be a ride that can’t end soon enough.

Director/co-writer Frank E. Flowers wastes little time revealing The Bluff is going to be a bleak and bloody affair.

Captain Connor (Karl Urban, The Boys) unleashes his pirate crew on a small boat searching for the gold he claims belongs to him. After massacring the crew, Connor demands the captain (Ismael Cruz Cordova) tell him where the gold is hidden.

That would be on a small island where the captain’s wife, Ercell (Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Heads of State), is caring for their son, Issac (Vedanten Naidoo), and her sister-in-law, Elizabeth (Safia Oakley-Green). Elizabeth isn’t particularly thrilled at the idea of having to listen to her in-law who treats her more like a daughter instead of a sister and plans to run off with her boyfriend. That doesn’t work out well as her getaway gets ruined by Connor’s men.

Connor knows the truth about Ercell — that she’s a notorious pirate who doesn’t take kindly to her family and townsfolk being threatened. For the sake of drama, Ercell and her family live on the back section of the town allowing Connor and his advance team to storm the island and massacre the town defenders while’s she’s occupied fighting off two of his men.

This is one of the more intricate action sequences of The Bluff — one that Flowers stages in a way as if Connor was the hero as he valiantly takes on dozens of town defenders by himself while his sharpshooter snipes away with deadeye aim from the landing boat.

Connor is hardly a conquering hero battling the odds as he violently skewers his opponents. He makes an example of the leader of the guard by having him strung up and placed in front of a cannon. That feels like a wildly gory death for a film that probably would have been a lot more fun if the filmmakers simply lightened up a bit.

While an impressive showcase of Connor’s prowess, it illustrates the bigger issue with The Bluff.  Flowers and co-writer Joe Ballarini spend a half hour showing the formidable nature of Connor’s crew only to make them incompetent buffoons who suddenly develop Stormtrooper aim and can’t hit Ercell. It feels less that Ercell is some unstoppable force so much as Flowers just opts to make Connor’s crew inept for the first time at killing.

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Flowers and Ballarini try to make The Bluff a commentary on colonization, but it doesn’t land among so much empty dialogue. Instead, it comes off more like a decent premise for a revenge flick not one where Ercell is retired and simply trying to live her best life.

Chopra Jonas is a performer who is usually better than her material. For an actress who can convincingly portray a steely action hero, it seems like she should be headlining a successful action franchise by now, yet she keeps having to settle for underwhelming material. That streak doesn’t end with The Bluff, but Chopra Jonas is admirably committed to making this weak material work.

Urban is likewise steady even though his buccaneer baddie feels largely toothless after his big opening act showcase. Temuera Morrison (The Wrecking Crew) delivers a solid supporting turn as Connor’s first mate leading the charge while Ercell tries to get her family to the bluff.

When the script’s logic falters, which is frequent, Flowers plays out another technically sound, yet unenthusiastic over the top action sequence. In the final act, Ercell gets a stats upgrade to basically make her a cross between Batman and Michael Myers.

The Bluff is two hours and 20 minutes yet manages to feel longer. That’s mostly due to a middling middle section that just drags on with weak character development that feels more like padding out the film’s run time than contributing anything meaningful to the story.

Going the overly serious route for a film that would benefit from more gags than gore spoils a lot of the potential fun for The Bluff needed a far more intriguing hook.

Rating: 4 out of 10

Photo Credit: Amazon

The Bluff is now streaming on Amazon Prime.

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