![]() ![]() The characters in HAT are often witty, or exasperated, or using humor as a coping mechanism, but they aren’t all exactly the same kind of sarcastic. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, but stops short of the deliberate camera-winking that’s come to be a trademark of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The word I keep wanting to use here, which I’ve already used once, is “light.” HAT is a popcorn movie at heart, where most of the jokes land, the fights are exciting, and the special effects are overall solid. There are a couple of elements that might be confusing to a total D&D layman, such as Holga’s overtly superhuman strength (she’s a barbarian in D&D, crazy feats of strength are part of the barbarian class’s whole deal), but I can’t imagine they’d take anyone out of the film. HAT is very fast-paced, moving from one plot beat to the next at lightning speed, but it’s easy to follow and consistently entertaining. The rest of the movie, as Edgin and company put together what they need to pull off the Neverwinter heist, feels like it’s on fast-forward. ![]() Towards that end, Edgin and Holga reunite with Simon recruit Dorek (Sophia Lillis, It), a tiefling druid and shapeshifter and beg for help from the paladin Xenk (Regé-Jean Page, Brigerton). To rescue Kira, and prove to her that Forge has been lying, Edgin comes up with a plan to break into Forge’s vault in Neverwinter. Worse, Forge has adopted Kira, has led her to believe that Edgin simply abandoned her, and proceeds to try and have Edgin and Holga quietly executed. After a jailbreak, they follow Forge’s trail to the city of Neverwinter, where he’s somehow become the lord of the city. When Edgin’s crew attempts to rob a magical vault, in search of a magical artifact that can resurrect Edgin’s late wife, Edgin and Holga are caught in the act and spend the next two years in prison in Icewind Dale. In HAT, Edgin (Chris Pine, Wonder Woman) was once the leader of a small band of thieves, pulling off heists against the rich with the barbarian exile Holga (Michelle Rodriguez, The Fast and the Furious), Simon (Justice Smith, Detective Pikachu), Forge (Hugh Grant, The Remains of the Day), and Edgin’s daughter Kira (Chloe Coleman, Avatar 2). If you’re a longtime fan of the games, then it’s also entertaining to see so many of D&D’s spells, creatures, and cities in live action. If you’ve never so much as read a D&D book, then HAT is a light, funny heist caper set in a big, sprawling fantasy world. Instead, it threads that needle by carefully introducing exactly as much lore as it needs in any given moment. This isn’t to say that you have to know anything about the tabletop game before you watch HAT. That, more than anything else about it, makes HAT feel just like a game of D&D it’s a movie about not letting your mistakes stop or define you. Even better/worse, they proceed to continue to do so for much of HAT’s two-hour running time. The protagonists of Honor Among Thieves, a live-action movie from Paramount based on the tabletop game published by Renton, Wash.-based Wizards of the Coast, are all near-complete failures at the start of the movie. In D&D, players throw dice to see whether their actions will succeed, and by the law of averages, everyone rolls snake eyes eventually. One of the things you have to get used to in a tabletop role-playing game is that sooner or later, you’re going to fail. The most Dungeons & Dragons thing about Honor Among Thieves is that its protagonists are all complete screw-ups. Left to right: Michelle Rodriguez, Chris Pine, Justice Smith, a gelatinous cube, and Sophia Lillis, from Paramount Pictures’ Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. ![]()
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