Vague Visages’ Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves review contains minor spoilers. John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein’s 2023 movie stars Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez and Regé-Jean Page. Check out the VV home page for more film reviews, along with cast/character summaries, streaming guides and complete soundtrack song listings.

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Based on a tabletop role-playing game, Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is an attempt at market synergy from an existing intellectual property by Paramount, Hasbro and Hasbro subsidiary Entertainment One. The film plays in the MCU’s space of wide-appeal action, adventure, comedy and fantasy but doesn’t follow the template to failure like previous adaptations. This is, therefore, both a successful marketing exercise for Dungeons & Dragons as a product and as an above-middling blockbuster. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves will no doubt set up a franchise that will exhaust moviegoers in short order, but it feels genuinely refreshing for the moment.

Four adventurers — Chris Pine as Edgin the bard, Michelle Rodriguez as Holga the warrior, Justice Smith as Simon the sorcerer and Sophia Lillis as Doric the shapeshifter — work together to steal a fortune from two old acquaintances and reunite Edgin with his daughter Kira (Chloe Coleman). Along the way, the audience meets the wily Forge Fitzwilliam (Hugh Grant), the powerful Sofina (Daisy Head) and Xenk Yendar (Regé-Jean Page), a renowned do-gooder whose straight man act provides ample comedy within their quest. The story beats and character relationships are well executed yet relatively standard; the problem-solving and teamwork draw from the dice-rolling RPG roots as well as influences like Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and The Princess Bride (1987), but not to either’s great heights.

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The performances are earnest and believable, headlined by Pine as the central conduit — he’s successful as both the main protagonist and narrator. While Rodriguez doesn’t always feel fluid with her dialogue, she is excellent in her combat sequences, believable in her grief/joy and nails some blunt lines. The sorcerer Simon is alternatively sympathetic and incredibly irritating in ways that read as authentic. Doric the druid, however, feels short of proper characterization. Her background, commitment and desires make sense, but Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves simply doesn’t give as much thought to her interiority as her motivation. One of the best scenes in the film is a chase scene focused on the character but not the person — it’s all CGI shapeshifting. 

As for Page, the Bridgerton star displays leading man potential. In Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, however, he is used relatively sparingly. My only real knock is structural and beyond his control. Page’s main fight scene briefly feels too much like a video game until verticality is introduced, returning a refreshing swashbuckling sensibility.

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While Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’ admirable digital effects are sometimes undercut in the first half by cinematography, the combination of on-location shooting, physical costumes and makeup with computer-generated imagery makes the world feel more real. The fantasy world feels accessible, including some creatures and non-human characters such as the Dragonborn (dragon people), Aarakocra (bird people), Tabaxi (cat people) and other enlarged animals or strange creatures. Besides that, a magical duel near the climax exemplifies something important that many supernatural-themed productions forget: magic is supposed to be a spectacle with specificity that inspires awe, not just a laser light show of electric beams shooting at each other. 

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Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is more creative and heartfelt than expected. Despite the potential of wide-ranging consequences in its conflict, the film steadily maintains cohesion and intimacy. Playing Dungeons & Dragons is about telling a story together with your friends, and the team here feels like a collaborating party. Furthermore, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves doesn’t undercut the stakes by breaking the fourth wall and revealing people playing the game a la Jumanji (1995).

Goldstein and Daley’s adaptation is an approachable fantasy film that mostly takes its world seriously, despite a deep indulgence of humor. And while the world isn’t so obtuse as to be obstructive, long-term fans of the tabletop game and various adaptations will still recognize names, places and creatures in the foreground and background.

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Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves will please fans of studio genre tentpoles and nerdy epics that look to stretch their legs away from superhero multiverses. The film leaves little for those seeking deep meditations on human life and experience, though its commentary on the distinction between a father and a husband feels sincere. Of course, romance exists primarily for comedic asides and background drama, but it would have been stronger to break with this trend among today’s all-ages films. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves doesn’t quite reach the visually brilliant spectacular heights of films like Avatar: The Way of Water (2023), Top Gun: Maverick (2022) or RRR (2022), but it maintains a mystical scale and magical scope when it isn’t being undercut by the editing. This is a movie about finding family members that families will enjoy. Operating in a setting and aesthetic sensibility between The Lord of the Rings and Marvel, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves hopes to steal some of the latter’s thunder before the former gets its fourth distinct adaptation in two decades. In a film world full of geek culture adaptations, Daley and Goldstein’s 2023 adaptation is the functional and rewarding film that Dungeons & Dragons fans have long awaited.

Kevin Fox, Jr. (@KevinFoxJr) is a freelance writer, editor and film critic. His work has appeared in Paste Magazine and People’s World. Kevin has an MA in history, loves audiovisual entertainment and dreams of liberation. Check out his Substack at kfjwrites.substack.com.

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