‘The Bluff’ Review: Old-School Pirate Pulp With a Modern Action Kick (Prime Video)

You have no idea what kind of woman you’re dealing with,” Captain Connor warns his crew when they realize their little stopover on Caiman Brac isn’t going to be a routine smash-and-grab. And that line basically sums up The Bluff, a gleefully violent pirate romp starring Priyanka Chopra Jones as the mysterious woman in question. Connor is played by Karl Urban (yes, that Karl Urban—from The Boys), and the film is directed by Frank E. Flowers, with production muscle from Anthony Russo and Joe Russo. On paper, it’s a pirate movie. In practice, it plays like someone tossed a swashbuckler into a blender with John Wick, a mid-tier Marvel spin-off, and a stack of ’70s ninja flicks—then hit “extra CGI.” Expect extended action sequences, digital backdrops, and dialogue that exists strictly to shuttle us from one fight to the next.

And yet… it’s not half bad.

For what is essentially a B-movie dumped into a dead February weekend, reportedly on a modest budget (one remote island, a tight cast, minimal world-building), The Bluff delivers a surprising jolt of energy. The action—staged by frequent Russo collaborators and clearly indebted to Asian martial-arts choreography—has snap and clarity. The plot is lean enough that the whole thing breezes by in just over 100 minutes, which feels like a conscious mercy.

The setup is clean and efficient. Connor kidnaps T.H. Bodden (Ismael Cruz Córdova) aboard his pirate ship and sails him back to Caiman Brac. There, T.H.’s wife Ercell (Chopra Jones) lives with their young son Isaac (Vedanten Naidoo), who has a motor disability, and her sister-in-law Elizabeth (Safia Oakley-Green). It all looks idyllic: turquoise water, quiet domestic life, the kind of postcard serenity that practically begs to be disrupted. And disrupted it is.

A gang of thugs shows up to eliminate Ercell. Big mistake. Within seconds, this supposedly humble housewife starts dismantling oversized henchmen like she’s speed-running a combat tutorial. Limbs fly, bodies drop, and it becomes abundantly clear that Ercell is not exactly who she claims to be. We won’t spoil the specifics. Let’s just say Connor, his right-hand man Lee (Temuera Morrison), and their bargain-bin buccaneers are hunting for gold they believe Ercell has stashed away. Holding her husband hostage, they expect her to hand over the bars. Naturally, she has other plans.

From there, the film turns into a sun-drenched game of cat and mouse across beaches, mangroves, caves, and hidden tunnels. Flowers and his team make solid use of the island geography, crafting a handful of genuinely inventive action beats. The choreography leans heavily into close-quarters combat, improvised weapons, and physical brutality. Chopra Jones, dressed less like a pirate and more like a stealth-mode Marvel antihero (with a dash of ninja chic), commits fully to the bit. She convincingly takes down hulking attackers who look like they just wandered off an All Blacks scrum, armed with little more than grit and an arsenal of homemade tricks.

Urban, an actor who can intimidate a room just by speaking, is clearly having fun—but even his glowering Connor seems outmatched. Ercell—who, of course, isn’t really Ercell—proves more than a match for these discount Caribbean corsairs.

The story is straightforward. The film is straightforward. If you’re expecting labyrinthine twists or prestige-drama gravitas, you’ve boarded the wrong ship. The only mildly refreshing angle is that the unstoppable action hero here is not just a woman, but a devoted wife and mother, fighting not for vague destiny but for her family. That detail nudges The Bluff closer to the DNA of mid-century pulp adventure—those B-grade genre pictures of the ’40s and ’50s where emotion was simple, stakes were personal, and morality came in bold strokes. Underneath the digital gloss and modern stunt work, this is, at heart, an old-school pirate tale.