When Priyanka Chopra Jonas began shifting her focus to Hollywood a decade ago, she described feeling boxed in by the industry that first made her a household name. Since then, her American résumé has been a mixed bag—ranging from the espionage spectacle of Citadel to glossy romantic fare like Love Again, with the critically admired The White Tiger standing out as a reminder of her dramatic range. Now, with The Bluff, she returns to action mode—this time with a cutlass in hand and blood on her boots.
Set in 1846, as the age of Caribbean piracy sputters toward extinction, the film casts Chopra Jonas as Ercell “Bloody Mary” Bodden, a former pirate trying to live quietly on the island of Cayman Brac. Once a terror of the seas, Ercell has traded cannon fire for coconuts, building a family life with her husband T.H. Bodden (Ismael Cruz Córdova) and their children, Issac and Elizabeth. The conch shell-lined walkways and mangrove-fringed shores suggest a hard-won peace. It doesn’t last long.
A Home Under Siege
The inciting violence arrives swiftly. T.H. is captured by the fearsome Captain Connor, played with brooding intensity by Karl Urban, a bounty-hunting pirate who once mentored Ercell and now claims her as unfinished business—if not outright property. Connor raids the island in search of gold coins allegedly hidden by the Bodden family. His men descend on Ercell’s home in a bravura single-take invasion sequence that blends stunt-heavy choreography with splashes of grindhouse grit.
Ercell responds not as a damsel but as a force of nature. She brains intruders with a conch shell, wields daggers with lethal precision, and spits defiance into the faces of attackers. The violence is unapologetically messy: dreadlocks torn out by the roots, blades slashing through dimly lit rooms, and blood occasionally splattering the lens itself. It’s the kind of sensory excess that seems designed for immersive theatrical formats—even if the film heads straight to streaming.
In those moments, The Bluff finds its pulse. Chopra Jonas throws herself into the physicality, dragging her battered body across floors and mangroves with the tenacity of a slasher-film survivor. There’s a tactile grit to her performance, even when the dialogue veers toward pulp.
Bloody Mary Rises Again
Connor’s siege escalates quickly. He storms the beaches with ominous pronouncements, vowing that no one will leave the island until he retrieves what he considers his. The threat isn’t just gold—it’s Ercell herself, a living symbol of his past authority and present obsession.
With her community terrorized into silence and her children suddenly in the crossfire, Ercell slips back into her old persona. “Bloody Mary” resurfaces—not as myth, but as muscle memory. Like riding a bike, piracy comes flooding back.
The story morphs into a cat-and-mouse pursuit through Cayman Brac’s natural labyrinth: mangroves, alligator-infested rivers, and Skull Cave, an underground hideout that feels ripped from space opera iconography. Ercell dispatches Connor’s men in increasingly inventive fashion, hurling bombs, slicing through ambushes, and turning the island’s geography into a weapon.
The concluding sword fight between Ercell and Connor mostly lands, delivering the face-off promised by the premise. Both actors smolder convincingly, suggesting a murky history hinted at but never fully explored. References to their past at sea tease emotional and perhaps erotic tension, though the film never lingers long enough to give it weight.
Flash Without Foundation
For all its muscular action, The Bluff struggles elsewhere. Produced by the Russo siblings—best known for blockbuster precision—the film carries the sheen of a bigger project than it ultimately becomes. It’s handsomely mounted and occasionally imaginative, yet curiously underdeveloped.
Dialogue often leans on quippy declarations. Ercell arms a pastor with a flintlock and quips about faith and firepower. She instructs her family to “Distract. Defend. Destroy.” The lines are serviceable, even crowd-pleasing, but they stack up quickly, leaving little room for quieter character beats. At times, both Chopra Jonas and Urban seem stranded within the frame—posed rather than present, scowling rather than reacting.
The sexism of Connor’s crew is painted in broad strokes, with taunts about Bloody Mary becoming a “fishwife.” Meanwhile, Ercell’s stepdaughter occasionally functions more as exposition device than character, asking questions that exist solely to move the plot along.
The result feels like a high-budget B-movie—simultaneously overproduced and undercooked. It’s nostalgia bait in pirate garb, evoking swashbuckling adventures of the past without fully capturing their romance or danger.
The Promise of More
Yet dismissing The Bluff outright would be too easy. There’s undeniable fun in its excesses. The action, when it coheres, delivers bursts of adrenaline. The Caribbean setting is rendered lush and immersive, offering sun-drenched beauty alongside claustrophobic caverns and blood-slicked interiors.
Most of all, Chopra Jonas commits. Even when the script doesn’t stretch her dramatically, she inhabits the film’s pulpiness with conviction. She can play hero and villain in the same breath—reminding viewers that pirates, as her character notes pointedly, are murderers, not legends.
The film’s closing moments clearly angle for a sequel, suggesting that Bloody Mary’s story isn’t finished. Whether a second installment can deepen what this one sketches remains to be seen. The ingredients are there: a charismatic lead, a visually striking setting, and a premise that promises danger and desire in equal measure.
The Bluff premieres globally on Prime Video on 25 February.
