‘The Bluff’ Review – A New But Disappointing Installment In The Pirate Genre

There’s a genuinely strong premise at the heart of The Bluff, and it’s frustrating because you can see the potential almost immediately. A former pirate who has built a quiet life for herself in the Cayman Islands is forced back into violence when her old captain invades her home and threatens her family. That’s a clean, high-stakes setup as it’s intimate but still large in scope. You have history, betrayal, survival, and a mother protecting her child. That’s not thin material, it’s the kind of foundation you can build something muscular and emotionally grounded on.

The film follows Ercell “Bloody Mary” Bodden (Priyanka Chopra Jonas), who has left her pirate days behind and is living peacefully with her husband T.H. (Ismael Cruz Córdova) and their son Isaac (Vedanten Naidoo). When we first meet her, she isn’t framed as a legend but rather keeps things lowkey. She’s a wife and a mother, and her kids have no idea about her past. It makes the return of Captain Connor (Karl Urban) feel personal and high stakes, as he represents a past she actively buried.

Priyanka Chopra Jonas does a lot of heavy lifting here, especially physically. The action sequences are where the film feels most confident, and that’s largely because she commits fully. Her sword work feels trained rather than decorative. There’s weight to the choreography, and the close-quarters fighting has intention behind it. When she’s moving through confined spaces or fighting multiple people at once, you can feel the tactical awareness of someone who has survived before. It doesn’t look like a star going through rehearsed motions, but rather someone who understands how her character would fight.

Karl Urban, meanwhile, is clearly enjoying himself. He leans into Connor’s volatility and ego, and while the script doesn’t give him layered material, he at least gives the character personality. His appearance alone signals the type of man he is: the messy, almost shoulder-length hair, the unpolished beard, the posture of someone who thinks he owns every room he walks into. He’s not subtle, but he’s not sleepwalking either. You can see the effort.

Where the film struggles is in the writing. The central emotional conflict of Ercell reconciling who she was with who she has tried to become never fully develops beyond the surface. We’re told she has a violent past. We’re shown that she’s capable of brutality when necessary. But the internal struggle that should anchor the story isn’t explored in a meaningful way. Her transition back into warrior mode feels too smooth, too clean. The psychological cost of picking up that identity again barely registers.

That’s what ultimately holds the film back. It keeps moving forward plot-wise, but it doesn’t slow down enough to let the emotional consequences breathe. The invasion of the island should feel like a rupture. It should change something fundamental in her. Instead, it functions mostly as a trigger for the next action sequence.

Visually, the film is a mixed bag. The Cayman setting is inherently cinematic, and there are moments where the landscape adds scale and texture. But the overall look of the movie often feels muted in a way that doesn’t enhance the tone. Rather than gritty or tactile, it can come across as flat. For a film that clearly had the resources to build substantial sets and stage large sequences, the finished product sometimes feels visually underwhelming.

The supporting characters don’t get much room to exist outside their narrative function. T.H., Isaac, and Elizabeth are present, and they give Ercell something to fight for, but they’re not written with enough specificity to deepen the stakes. They are more symbolic than dimensional. When danger comes for them, you understand why it matters, but you don’t feel the full weight of it.

What keeps The Bluff watchable is its craftsmanship in moments. The action choreography is sharp. The production design has ambition. There are sequences that genuinely work, especially when the story narrows into the mechanics of survival. In those stretches, the film finds focus. You can see what it was aiming for: a raw, contained pirate thriller that emphasizes endurance over spectacle.

The issue is that it never quite goes far enough emotionally or narratively to distinguish itself. Outside of having a female pirate lead, which is refreshing but shouldn’t be the only standout quality, the film doesn’t push its themes in an interesting direction. It plays out in a way that feels safe. Competent, but safe.

By the end, you’re left with a movie that isn’t bad in execution, but isn’t memorable in impact either. It delivers solid fight sequences and committed performances from Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Karl Urban, yet it stops short of becoming something that lingers. It had the ingredients for a harder-hitting story about identity, legacy, and survival, but it settles for being a straightforward action vehicle.

There’s nothing wrong with straightforward action when it’s anchored by strong character work. The frustrating part here is that the character work feels like it’s always about to deepen, and then simply doesn’t.

That’s what makes The Bluff disappointing. Not because it fails completely, but because you can see how much more it could have been.

The Bluff will debut on Prime Video on February 25, 2026.