DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES is a fantasy movie about a group of friends with various abilities, including magic, shape shifting, fighting, and skullduggery, who help a man rescue his daughter from a former compatriot who betrayed the man, kidnapped his daughter and turned her against her father. HONOR AMONG THIEVES is a rousing, redemptive action adventure movie with a lot of heart and humor, but it has some expository scenes, foul language, scary monsters, and many scenes involving magic.

The story focuses on a man named Edgin who belongs to a knightly order called the Harpers that protects the community, especially against a demonic cult of sorcerers called the Red Wizards. However, the job doesn’t pay much to provide for his wife, Xia, and baby, Kira. So, on one job against a Red Wizard, he takes a small item from the fiend’s treasure. As a result, returning home one day, he discovers his wife murdered by the wizard and his soldiers, but his wife managed to hide their baby in a secret cubbyhole.

Distraught by his wife’s death, Edgin is rescued from a drunken stupor by his friend, Holga, a tough female warrior. Holga was banished from her tribe when she married a man from another tribe who eventually left her because she was too despondent about being banished.

To make ends meet, and to help Edgin provide for his daughter, Kira, Edgin and Holga form a team of thieves. The other members include a con man named Forge, the oldest in the team, and a young wizard named Simon.

Several years later, Edgin learns of a treasure trove guarded by the Harpers that includes a magical device called the Tablet of Reawakening, which can be used one time to resurrect a dead person. Edgin and his team of thieves develop a plan to steal the treasure and the Tablet so that Edgin can bring back to life his murdered wife. However, Forge brings along a mysterious female wizard named Sofina. Firge and Sofina betray the team and Edgin and Holga are imprisoned, but Simon escapes.

Two years later, Edgin and Holga go before a kind of medieval parole board. The movie actually begins with them before the parole board, were Edgin tells his story about why they were trying to steal the Tablet of Reawakening. The parole board is moved by his story, but before the board can tell them their sentences are commuted, Edgin and Holga escape.

They learn that, since their imprisonment, Forge and Sofina have magically imprisoned the Lord of Neverwinter so that Forge can become Lord and rule that kingdom. They visit Forge and Sofina, but Edgin learns that Forge and Sofina have the Tablet of Reawakening locked in the palace’s impregnable magic vault. Edgin also learns that Forge has virtually kidnapped Edgin’s daughter, Kira, by posing as her friend. To make matters worse, he’s fed Kira a pack of lies about him to turn Kira’s heart against her father. Unknown to Kira, Forge gives an order to have Edgin and Holga executed, but they escape.

Edgin and Holga decide to form a new team to help Edgin get into the vault and gain access to the Tablet. The rest of the team can have whatever other spoils they find in the vault.

Edgin and Holga go to Simon to be their wizard. He suggests they enlist the aid of a young female shapeshifter named Doric, with whom Simon is in love. Holga tells the team that her tribe once had a magical device called the Helm of Disjunction, which can help Simon get past the magical spell that makes Forge’s vault impregnable.

The rest of the movie tells how the team goes on a quest to find the Helm of Disjunction. They find help from a knight with a pure heart, named Xenk. Edgin finds Xenk a little weird for his taste. For example, he doesn’t seem to understand humor or irony, and he speaks in wise aphorisms that rub Edgin the wrong way. However, Xenk encourages Edgin to be the kind of hero he used to be, before he turned to thievery and skullduggery after his beloved wife was murdered.

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES is a rousing, redemptive action adventure movie with a lot of heart and humor. The cast does a great job with all the movie’s action, jeopardy and winsome, dramatic dialogue. Regé-Jean Page almost steals the show as the knight with a pure heart.

HONOR AMONG THIEVES has some expository scenes, foul language, scary monsters, and many scenes involving magic. So, MOVIEGUIDE® advises caution for older children and adults. However, the main villain is a demonic sorceress trying to gain control of the kingdom to destroy people. The heroes must defeat this demonic villain to save the kingdom and hundreds if not thousands of souls.

Also, the movie’s uplifting premise involves a father who’s trying to save his young daughter from a charlatan who’s fed the daughter a pack of lies and is working with the demonic villain in the story. Thus, it is Chris Pine’s performance as the flawed but charming hero and his onscreen relationship with the hero’s daughter, played by the superb young actress Chloe Coleman, that is the movie’s emotional center. As the fun to watch female warrior, Michelle Rodrigues of the FAST AND FURIOUS movies has her own positive relationship with the daughter that’s very heartwarming. HONOR AMONG THIEVES tops all this off with a great, satisfying ending.