Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Bluff’ on Amazon Prime Video, an Action-Heavy, Brutally Violent Pirate Flick Starring Priyanka Chopra Jonas

By John Serba

For The Bluff (now streaming on Amazon Prime Video), Cayman Islands native filmmaker Frank E. Flowers co-scripted an action-heavy pirate movie to be set in the Cayman Islands – then shot the film in Australia. Welcome to the reality of tax incentives! However, the sad-tromboneness of that production fact is somewhat offset by the novelty of watching a pirate movie in 2026, one that sets up totally game-for-it co-stars Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Karl Urban as swashbuckling rivals with their eyes on, yes, of course, what else would you expect, a stash of gold. And as it turns out, their director ain’t too shabby at executing action sequences.

THE BLUFF: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

The Gist: A title card tells us it’s 1846, and the old-school arrr-matey pirates are a dying breed. So, shitty luck that merchant-ship Capt. T.H. Bodden (Ismael Cruz Cordova) is the target of some, then. He’s not too far from home when Capt. Connor (Urban) and his scruffy scalawags commandeer the vessel by force? Why? Not for just the halibut. No, Connor wants his gold back, and he’s been lusting for it for a long time now. Cut to: CAYMAN BRAC, SIX DAYS LATER. A little village exists cheerfully near the sea, and in that little village lives Capt. Bodden’s wife Ercell (Jonas), their 13-year-old son Issac (Vedanten Naidoo) and his sister Lizzy (Safia Oakley-Green). It’s a place of beauty and bliss and peace and harmony and it would be just so very awful if a bunch of assholes came along and disrupted it. 

Apropos of absolutely nothing at all whatsoever, promise, cross our hearts and hope to die, the plot introduces a knife, belonging to Issac, gifted to him by his father and, in a greater contextual sense, gifted to the plot by Chekhov. He, Ercell and Lizzy are concerned because T.H. is late returning from his voyage. That night, Ercell spots a couple of creeps lurking outside the house. She stashes Issac, who wears leg braces for his disability, in a hidey hole, and learns that Lizzy ran off with her boyfriend. One of the creeps is named Scout (Greg Hatton), and I only mention him because he’s quite memorable for his impressively raggedy teeth, which deserve the center spread of The Big Book of British Smiles. Our dentally challenged friend and his compadre make the mistake of getting between Ercell and Issac, because Ercell is A Secret Badass With A Past, and they just provoked her inner mama bear, who has no qualms with pounding on a man’s skull with a conch shell until it looks like an upended can of Chunky Steak ‘n’ Potato Soup.

This is when Connor comes ashore, bellowing about his gold, T.H. as his hostage bargaining chip. “Such a fragile thing, paradise,” Connor sneers, reconfirming his assholedom. This is also when I’d normally sum up more plot with a bit of detail, but The Bluff really doesn’t have any. The aforementioned Past of Ercell’s involves Connor and his gold. She stole it, he wants it back, and he won’t get it without a fight, since she’s apparently the Bruce Lee of retired Caribbean ladypirates, capable of taking on a horde of faceless goons with explosives, flintlock rifles and flurries of fists. Thankfully, the gators down at the creek soften them up a little bit first. 

Photo: ©Amazon/Courtesy Everett Collection

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? The Bluff is a Pirates of the Caribbean movie with about 15 percent of the budget, with a bit of Rambo (which one? Um, how about Rambo III?) inspired hard-R violence thrown in.

Performance Worth Watching: Nobody veers outside the templates of their roles here, so a hat-tip to Urban for eating a bit of the beautiful tropical scenery, as villains in pirate movies inevitably do. 

Sex And Skin: None.

Photo: ©Amazon/Courtesy Everett Collection

Our Take: This clearly isn’t the first time Ercell – IF that is your REAL NAME – has managed to wiggle her way out of a noose. The Bluff is a throwback action film in the sense that it’s smartly directed and barely written, primarily an excuse to stage a few choice action sequences, including a nifty home invasion shot in one long take, a siege in a booby-trapped cave and a big final clashing of swords between old rivals. None of it moves the needle with regards to modern fight choreography, shootouts and hot large-reptile action, but it showcases Flowers’ skill and ability to execute action that’s reasonably satisfying for a direct-to-streaming B-flick with what appears to be a modest budget.

The film at least moves quickly, doesn’t dilly-dally too much before getting to the good stuff and keeps it all at a tight 103 minutes. It also doesn’t show much interest in the inner moral conflict of Jonas’ protagonist; the script doesn’t even bother to give her a line addressing any regret she might feel for what she did in the past to provoke the current situation, or for forcing her to unleash hell on people with a mighty fury that might surprise those of us who press play without realizing this is movie gets a hard R rating for its harsh violence. It’s rough, it’s bloody, and it’s unapologetic about it. 

It might be worth noting that The Bluff isn’t so much of a throwback that it turns pirates into parrots-and-eyepatches cartoonz – they’re just a bunch of grubby bastards with greezy hair and a blatant lack of oral hygiene. It also doesn’t lean into the overt girlboss feminist stuff that’s become a cliche in recent years. Granted, that might’ve given it a bit of thematic depth that it generally lacks, but Flowers is content to have Jonas switch out the dress for pants and leather armor, throw in a snatch or two of overheated melodrama and play with his human action figures for a little while. It aims to be paper-thin, undemanding entertainment, and meets that objective. 

Our Call:  The Bluff is totally passable. No need to throw it in the brig. Or make it walk the plank. Or schedule it a trip to Davy Jones’ Locker. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.