Priyanka Chopra Jonas Is a Convincing, Swashbuckling John Wick in Pirate-Set Motion

Priyanka Chopra Jonas is the pirate model of John Wick in Frank E. Flowers’ The Bluff, Amazon’s newest straight-to-streaming motion flick. That is principally all you want to know. Throw in The Boys‘ Karl City as a tobacco-chewing captain who solely speaks in moody platitudes, a beautiful Cayman island, and scores of buccaneers being blasted by makeshift bombs and barrel shotguns, and you have your self an actual barn-burning good time.

The Bluff is a rollicking throwback to the swashbuckling motion of previous. It’s brutal and ingenious sufficient to clean over its spinoff narrative. The script, by Flowers and Joe Ballarini, is usually bare-bones, with an considerable effectivity, rapidly changing into a ninety-minute showcase for very tense, bloody combat choreography from Marvel stalwarts Tara Macken and Kyle Gardiner (the Russo brothers function govt producers).

The Bluff Locations Its Revenge Narrative Contained in the Brutal World of Put up-Colonial Piracy

Jonas performs Ercell, a younger mom making an attempt to stay a peaceable life on the emancipated Cayman Brac, somewhat slice of heaven, in 1846. The world of rampant buccaneering has all however disappeared, with the remaining pirates, supposedly, extra ruthless than anybody who has come earlier than. It has been a minute since Ercell has seen her husband, T.H. (Ismael Cruz Cordova), who has been gone for 59 days at sea, or so goes the depend by her disabled son, Isaac (Vedanten Naidoo), who places himself to sleep by studying a e book of pirate tales.

The 2 stay in concord alongside T.H.’s youthful sister, Elizabeth (Safia Oakley-Inexperienced) in an enthralling, colourful shack by the small, native village, till a fleet of troopers arrives on shore. Two of their members assault Ercell in her kitchen within the first of many claustrophobic, electrical fights, and combat out in a short time that that is no bizarre housewife.

The pirates are led by Captain Connor (City), a steely-eyed relic who’s looking down Ercell on suspicion that the lady previously often called Bloody Mary has decamped right here with gold and different buried treasure. Like Wick, like No one, like every fill-in-the-blank Jason Statham character from the final decade, Ercell should shed the costume of suburban normalcy to disclose the highly-skilled mercenary she actually is. Apart from its interval specifics and its placement on a post-colonial Cayman island, its set-up is frustratingly typical.

Regardless, it’s what it’s, and Ercell places her household on her again in a chase via the forestry to get to the titular bluff, a perch atop a hidden cave the place all of the treasure has sat, untouched, for years. Components of this sequence are harking back to Predator, with the pursued changing into the pursuant, and like Die Arduous in Ercell’s dogged dedication to combat with Rube Goldberg machines and McGuyver-like improvised contraptions.

The Bluff would possibly put on a variety of its influences on its sleeve, however it’s really its personal factor regardless. A number of of the combat scenes are a few of the most kinetically satisfying within the style’s latest reminiscence. Cayman Brac is understood for its plethora of caves and tunnels, and Flowers has a enjoyable time using the panorama’s pure labyrinth for violently balletic motion sequences. One scene particularly is tensely lit and shot by Greg Baldi solely via the momentary flashes of gunfire.

A part of what makes The Bluff work so effectively when it does is its charming setting. Cayman Brac (which suggests bluff in Gaelic) is a playground of golden vistas, hidden corners and large timber, making the small stretch of land really feel like a real-life laser tag space. Flowers, who has shot on the Cayman’s earlier than (Haven was the primary function to be shot fully there), intimately is aware of methods to maximalize the world that Ercell has constructed a house on.

Jonas is a drive as Ercell. She’s weak and deeply human when her world is being threatened but highly effective and guttural in response. She appears a pure for the form of sword and gun-fu that Macken and Gardiner throw her approach, and performs effectively off of City’s cooler, calmer, extra sadistic Connor.

Because the movie goes on, Flowers and Ballarini’s screenplay reveals its deeper messaging on how colonial violence bleeds into the individuals it terrorizes, inevitably perpetuating a cycle of bloodshed. As a reinvention of the Wick mythos, The Bluff is adventurous and shocking, with simply sufficient innovation to search out its personal treasure.

The Bluff releases on Prime Video on February twenty fifth, 2026.