Diksha Sundriyal
Directed by Frank E. Flowers, Prime Video’s ‘The Bluff’ follows the story of Ercell, who is forced to reckon with her past when a crew of infamous pirates, led by Captain Connor, land on her tranquil island. Unfolding over the course of a day, the film follows Ercell’s attempts to save her family while Connor and his men take over the island in search of revenge and treasure. The gritty action sequences and the compelling narrative make the film a deeply enjoyable watch, but it is the realism that gives more depth and authenticity to the characters. SPOILERS AHEAD.
The Fictional Pirates of The Bluff are Rooted in Reality
‘The Bluff’ is a fictional story penned by Frank E. Flowers and Joe Ballarini, who wanted to make a different kind of pirate movie. Hailing from the Cayman Islands, Flowers was deeply influenced by the Pirate Week festival, where people dressed as pirates and reenacted pirate invasions. The writer-director tapped into that, imagining how the island’s people would have felt when attacked by pirates. One of the things he wanted to do in the movie was portray the pirates as the trained, merciless killers they would have been in real life, coming together from all over the world to use their skills to wreak havoc on the world.
Instead of romanticizing them, he focused on a hard-hitting, gritty version of them, which is what led to the creation of Ercell, aka Bloody Mary, and Captain Connor. While the screenwriters didn’t base the characters on any particular pirate, they did research the history of piracy to understand the lives of the pirates and how they were seen by the general public, who were terrified of them. Flowers revealed that he delved into the history of the Cayman Islands and got access to old letters from the archives, where he read detailed descriptions of pirate attacks.
This allowed him to get a sense of what someone like Captain Connor would look like. Karl Urban, who plays Connor, went through trial records of some of the most notorious pirates and used that outline to add substance to his fictional role. Priyanka Chopra looks into the lives of real-life female pirates like Mary Reed and Grace O’Malley. She and Flowers also visited the Cayman Islands, where they talked with the descendants of real pirates to understand how the pirates would have tried to assimilate into society in an effort to leave behind their violent and criminal past.
The Actors Added More Layers to Their Characters
A lot of character development for Ercell and Connor also happened in the conversations between the writers and the actors. Chopra brought her perspective as a woman and mother to enrich Ercell’s backstory. Even though a lot is left to the audience’s imagination, she, Karl Urban, and Frank Flowers had lengthy conversations about what actually went down between them when Ercell was still Bloody Mary, and what was left unsaid for all these years. The director also looked towards the women from his own community, referring to the roles they would take on when men went off to sea and to war, leaving them in charge of building the community and keeping things running.
Through Ercell, he wanted to present the strength of female figures in familial structures, highlighting how far people, especially mothers, would go to save the ones they love. The actors further leaned into the physical challenges of the roles. They performed a lot of their own stunts, for which they trained for weeks, to make the scenes as realistic and authentic as possible. This was another way in which the audience got to know them without getting into too many flashbacks or monologues about their past. The fighting style for each character was based on their personality.
Flowers didn’t want the action to feel too unrealistic, and the whole thing was choreographed in a way that each character’s physical abilities would be used in a way that made the action feel believable to the audience. They also made a point to use everyday things in action scenes, particularly in the first few action sequences where Ercell is caught by surprise and doesn’t have time to prepare for the attacks. All these nuances allowed Ercell and Connor to be portrayed as multi-layered characters, grounding them in reality and allowing the audience to root for or against them as the events unfold and the true nature of the characters comes to light.
Read More: The Bluff Ending Explained: Does Ercell Die?
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