Swashbuckling deeds of adventure in The Bluff

The last high-profile pirate movie with a female lead was Cutthroat Island (1995), which became one of the biggest box-office flops in history. Never mind that the film went wildly over budget, the script was a mess and actors Geena Davis and Matthew Modine weren’t bankable stars. It added to the perception that female-led action films don’t make money and that pirate movies are box-office poison.

These assumptions have been disproved since then, with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise reviving the swashbuckling genre, and movies such as Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) and Wonder Woman (2017) showing that female action heroes can be just as popular at the box office.

This leads us to The Bluff, a pirate movie with a woman in the lead role, which makes comparisons to Cutthroat Island inevitable. However, The Bluff has quite a few twists up its sleeve that set it apart from its predecessor.

The action takes place in 1846, and the intro ominously tells us that the Golden Age of piracy is ending, which makes those buccaneers who are still around even crueller and more desperate. The action starts with pirates attacking a merchant ship and killing all of its crew, except the captain, TH Bodden (Ismael Cruz Córdova from The Rings of Power).

Pirate Captain Connor (The Boys’ Karl Urban) is searching for his former partner, Bloody Mary, who betrayed him and stole his treasure. Turns out Bloody Mary is TH’s wife, now known as Ercell (Quantico star Priyanka Chopra Jonas), who’s waiting for him at home on the island of Cayman Brac where they live near a peaceful village with their disabled son, Issac (Vedanten Naidoo), and TH’s naive younger sister, Lizzy (Safia Oakley-Green).

Connor and his crew soon come calling, and it’s up to Ercell to both save her family and come to terms with her violent past.

Rip-roaring and fun

Although The Bluff is centred on pirates, most of the action takes place on land. It’s a rip-roaring action adventure that blends several genres, from home-invasion actioner to feminist revenge thriller, to hugely enjoyable effect.

Chopra Jonas has done quite a few action films and series, including Citadel, and she acquits herself well in the fight sequences, convincing as a once ruthless killer who did what she had to do to survive. Ercell is not portrayed as superhuman; she is hurt in the inventive but gory combat scenes, which heightens the stakes; as does the fact that she has a vulnerable son and sister-in-law to protect.

Issac and Lizzy could easily have become irritating as burdens to Ercell as they self-righteously judge her for her past, but refreshingly the script doesn’t give them the usual dumb mistakes that hamper the hero.

Neither of them makes a noise at an inadvertent moment, alerting the bad guys to their hiding place, nor trips over a tree root, slowing their escape. Instead Issac and Lizzy get some character development, leading to their own heroic moments. Temuera Morrison (Boba Fett in Star Wars) offers strong support as Connor’s no-nonsense quartermaster, while David Field makes an impression as a pacifist pastor with a past similar to Ercell’s.

Lots of life left for pirates

Although there’s plenty of violence, it’s mostly directed at soldiers and pirates, rather than the innocent people of the village. The film fortunately doesn’t dwell on the abuse Ercell suffered at Connor’s hands, although the fact that they had a physical relationship adds an extra dimension to his quest for revenge. Connor is not simply seeking retribution against a comrade who betrayed him; he sees Ercell as his possession. This is contrasted with the tender, loving moments between Ercell and TH.

High on a hallucinogenic weed he keeps chewing, Connor likes to wax lyrical, and Urban plays him with the arrogant swagger he brings to most of his roles. It’s his and Chopra Jonas’s movie star charisma that carries the film across any rough patches, keeping you invested as you wait for the final spectacular showdown between the two antagonists on the bluff of the title.

The film should be commended for depicting the Caribbean as a multicultural place, while two interesting details add some flavour: director Frank E Flowers is from the Cayman Islands, and Cayman Brac and its bluff are real places.

This entertaining film proves there’s still plenty of life in the pirate genre yet, and that women can stand shoulder to shoulder with men as action heroes. DM

The Bluff is on Amazon Prime Video.

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R35.