‘Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’ review: Rolling a natural 20

Movie review

It’s a world of fantasy, but as depicted in “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves,” it has a solidity and imaginative depth that makes it seem astonishingly real. 

Derived from the massively popular role-playing game published by Renton-based Wizards of the Coast and owned by Hasbro, the picture is lighthearted and action-packed with a central group of characters who are individually distinctive and collectively very engaging. It’s a genuine pleasure to spend time in their company. 

The leader of the band is a silver-tongued fellow named Edgin Darvis played with great good cheer by Chris Pine. He’s a thief embarked on a quest to be reunited with his young daughter, Kira (Chloe Coleman), whom he hasn’t seen in years, having been locked up for his thievery. His absence has made the kid extremely resentful, so there is a lot of work to do to repair that relationship, providing he can survive his quest to find her. 

Standing with him is a longtime friend and thief named Holga, played by a burly, battleax-wielding Michelle Rodriguez. She’s loyal but skeptical of Edgin’s leadership skills. He’s always making big plans that don’t pan out and she then has to wield that ax to extricate him from his follies.

Along the way, they team up with a young sorcerer with a tenuous command of the mystic arts (Justice Smith). His spells often go awry. 

The most confident member of the group is a brainy swordsman (“Bridgerton” star Regé-Jean Page) who delivers his pronouncements with uncannily precise eloquence. His dialogue is as sharp as his blade. 

Finally, a redheaded horn-adorned young woman (Sophia Lillis) joins the quest with some reluctance. She’s not too impressed with their questing skills. She’s a shape-shifter, a trait that helps her make narrow escapes by transforming instantly from one animal to another. 

Throughout their journey, they’re beset by weird creatures familiar to “D&D” players: a tubby fire-breathing dragon and a beast called an owlbear. Very ferocious, that one.

But the most villainous entity they encounter is a duplicitous schemer played with oleaginous insincerity by Hugh Grant. You can almost see a glistening slime trail leaking from him as he moves. A onetime friend of Edgin’s, he oozed his way into becoming the guardian of the hero’s daughter and did his devious best to turn her against her dad.

Under the direction of Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, working from a screenplay by Goldstein, Daley and Michael Gilio, the picture moves nimbly from set piece to set piece, never losing the narrative thread and allowing the actors to inhabit their characters with great empathy. 

Shot largely in Northern Ireland with some exteriors filmed in Iceland, the visuals often look like scenes from Middle-earth, an enchanted land, incredibly detailed and believable. Castles, mazes and battle scenes are woven into the “D&D” tapestry to give the picture a truly immersive feel.