The Bluff review: John Wick action meets Pirates Near the Caribbean

“The golden age of piracy is over,” says Captain Connor (Karl Urban), the vengeful, crafty villain of the Prime Video pirate action movie The Bluff. This may sound like a familiar lament to fans of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean movies, which are set near the end of the Golden Age of Piracy, and repeatedly discuss pirates’ waning fortunes. The Bluff takes place in 1846, nearly a century later than the most recent Pirates sequel — which means Connor is both correct, and unusually attuned to future historical designations. His pronouncement matches the movie’s opening on-screen text, which reads, intentionally or not, like a shot fired at the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise: “The era of pirates on the Caribbean Sea is dying.”