“The Bluff”
This silly and inane movie is a star vehicle for Priyanka Chopra Jonas (the wife of singer Nick Jonas). She plays Ercel, a housewife of the Caribbean married to a seafarer (Ismael Cruz Córdova) who is off on a mission. Ercel is caring for their son Issac (Vedanten Naidoo) and her much younger sister-in-law Elizabeth (Safia Oakley-Green, “Anemone,” “Out of the Darkness”) on Cayman Brac. Their idyllic tropical paradise is suddenly visited by a posse of unsavories demanding a stash of gold.
Turns out Ercel was previously “Bloody Mary,” a cutthroat pirate captain of the high seas. She toggles to Caribbean kick-ass queen and dispatches the first wave of henchmen, leading to a showdown with Mary/Ercel’s former running mate, Captain Connor (Karl Urban), who has taken her husband hostage.
Director Frank E. Flowers (“Haven”) then sends Jonas, dressed up ninja-style, through a disjointed montage of action sequences. She slices up baddies, or blows them up in various creative ways (the use of explosives is one of the more innovative aspects of the film) as her charges and betrothed sit haplessly by. ”The Bluff”’s title comes from the broad cliffside — or brac — of the island, where Mary has weapons stashed throughout a maze of booby-trapped tunnels. Flowers, who is from the Caymans, allegedly concocted the story from historical happenings and local lore. It’s half-baked, hackneyed mid-1800s high seas mush. Jonas most certainly deserved a better wing-spreader and Urban, who brings some of his cheeky, gruff machismo from “The Boys” to the part, isn’t enough to right the ship. Paging Jack Sparrow.
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