Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is I think the best attempt that a D&D movie. Whereas the three previous movies (two of them non-theatrical) tried for serious fantasy drama using moderate/low budgets and mostly failed this one goes for more campy with a fairly big budget (and the special effects are for the most part quite good). Think of it as a D&D Forgotten Realms campaign brought to the big screen.

The Initial Party

• Edgin Darvis (Chris Pine) - former Harper and leader of the band, a bard who comes up with the plans
• Holga Kilgore (Michelle Rodriguez) - Edgin's barbarian friend who is sort of second mother to his daughter Kira (Chloe Coleman)
• Simon Aumar (Justice Smith) - a sorcerer who is not that good with magic, unless he's under a lot of stress
• Forge Fitzwilliam (Hugh Grant) - the face man of the group

Edgin lost his wife a few years ago. He and the party are hired by the wizard Sofina (Daisy Head) to break into the Harper stronghold and loot it. Edgin is willing to do that because inside the vault room is the Tablet of Reawakening which would allow him to resurrect his dead wife (in this version getting killed by a Thayan magic dagger is permanent, though I guess we never see Raise Dead used in this movie). The heist kind of succeeds but Edgin and Holga are caught and sent to prison.

Two years later Edgin and Holga escape and search for Kira who is living under the care of Forge who is now Lord of Neverwinter. Turns out Forge is a bit of an asshat who's been lying to Kira about her father. Forge and Sofina (his wizard adviser) kick the two out of Neverwinter. (I think by now the audience also knows that Sofina is a Red Wizard of Thay, who are the evil evil bad guys in the Forgotten Realms). Edgin decides to break into Neverwinter's vault, steal the Tablet of Reawakening, raise his wife and prove to Kira he was telling the truth. To do that he forms a party.

The Second Party

• Edgin
• Holga
• Simon
• Doric (Sophia Lillis) - tiefling druid though pretty much only does wildshaping into different animals and inflicting spells via a hand sling, she and Simon dated for a while but it ended badly though Simon still has feelings
• Xenk Yendar (Regé-Jean Page) - a paladin who joins the party for a bit for questing in the Underdark, he has experience with Thayan Red Wizards.

They have to get some items. Then there's a heist to get into the Neverwinter vault. When they're captured Forge gives them one chance for a pardon if they win the High Sun Games, five teams compete in a death maze to get to the end first though most teams get TPK'd (total party killed). The party cleverly makes it out through a loophole (and we briefly see the characters from the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon competing in the maze) and make their escape out of the city.

But that's when Sofina enacts her plan to turn all the audience into zombies so the party has to head back to save the day...

I think if you go in expecting this to be like an actual-play D&D campaign then you'll enjoy it more. There's a lot of silly stuff between the characters that you'd see in over-the-board D&D. I like that they don't really call out the classes showing that the classes aren't straightjackets. Also not everyone is casting spells, sometimes the spells are just their abilities.

All in all it's a better movie than I expected and pretty enjoyable.