That brings the swaggering, scowling Captain Connor (Karl Urban) and his crew to Ercell’s home on Cayman Brac—a multicultural, emancipated British colony. He’s looking to settle old scores involving a chest full of missing gold. And while she initially seems like a sweet woman stuck in a bad situation because her husband (Ismael Cruz Córdova) works as a merchant captain, she’s got plenty of secrets of her own. There are weapons stashed around her house, hiding places at the ready, traumatic flashbacks weighing on her mind, and fighting skills that let her hold her own against the pirates who invade her home in the middle of the night.
Part of the fun of The Bluff is parsing out Ercell’s past and why she’s rigged the island with various Home Alone-style traps that can be launched at a moment’s notice. Needless to say, she’s got a personal connection to Captain Connor, but the specifics are a little more interesting than they might be in a classic damsel-in-distress-defends-herself story. And while Caymanian director Frank E. Flowers doesn’t rewrite the action-movie playbook, he demonstrates an appreciable commitment to shooting each of his action sequences in a distinctive way—from a close-quarters oner during the initial break-in to an almost Saving Private Ryan-esque beach invasion sequence.
There are other times where The Bluff seems like it wants to be more of an Indiana Jones-style retro romp too, complete with man-eating alligators and two likeable younger folks Ercell has to protect—her plucky sister-in-law Elizabeth (Safia Oakley-Green) and her even pluckier son Isaac (Vedanten Naidoo). Between that and the film’s colorful production design, it’s as if Flowers is updating a classic Hollywood swashbuckler with a modern amount of violence. It’s a clever idea, even if the film doesn’t push the latter quality quite far enough. The sound design is ultimately more graphic than the sword wounds, pistol blasts, and cannon explosions that are actually shown onscreen. And exteriors clearly shot in the sludgy CGI of a volume set do irreparable harm to the tactile aesthetic elsewhere.
Still, if The Bluff only hits the tone it’s aiming for about 75% of the time, that’s pretty solid—especially for a pirate movie. It helps that Chopra Jonas and Urban are two actors who are more than happy to commit to a high level of camp without winking at the material. Having mastered pretty much every subgenre of sci-fi, fantasy, and superhero storytelling, it feels right that Urban saved his most unabashedly scenery-chewing work for a sexy, angry pirate. And for her part, Chopra Jonas makes for a flinty, committed action heroine who remains just glamorous and poised enough that you know this feminist revenge saga isn’t going to push the envelope in traumatic ways. While The Bluff may not exactly be a B-movie hidden treasure, in an era where streaming action flicks have never been more abundant, it at least sets sail towards an ambitious horizon.
Director: Frank E. Flowers
Writer: Joe Ballarini, Frank E. Flowers
Starring: Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Karl Urban, Temuera Morrison, Ismael Cruz Cordova, Safia Oakley-Green, Vedanten Naidoo
Release Date: February 25, 2026 (Prime Video)
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