In the opening scene of Pirates of The Caribbean: At World’s End, there is a long line of pirates (and those who have affiliated with pirates) heading towards the gallows in Port Royal. A small boy about to be hanged begins singing (and humorously enough has braces) and gets the other pirates to join in his singing, an emotionally powerful scene. Unfortunately this is one of the only few good scenes throughout the entire film. Try to stay awake though, the other one or two good scenes are scattered throughout the poorly paced 162 minutes.
Lord Cutler Beckett(Tom Hollander), head of the East Indian Trading Company in Port Royal, is slowly putting an end to piracy and is now in complete control of Davy Jones (Bill Nighy), the phantom captain of the Flying Dutchman. In response the assault of Beckett, the pirate lords of are called to the Brethren Court at Shipwreck Cove (think of it as the Pirate United Nations). Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), pirate lord of the Caribbean, has died without a successor and must be brought back from Davy Jones’ locker. Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) leads Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightly) to Singapore to meet pirate lord Sao Feng (Chow Yun-Fat) who has the navigational maps to the locker. Feng catches Will attempting to steal the maps, but the East Indian Trading Company attacks Feng’s bathhouse. During the battle, Will makes a deal with Feng that he can have Sparrow in exchange for the Black Pearl which Will needs to save his father (Stellan Skarsgård) from eternal slavery on the Flying Dutchman. After Barbossa, Will, Elizabeth, and the crew sail through a frozen sea, they appear to fall off the edge of the earth.
“There is still an hour left…” was one of the many things I said in despair to my friend while at a showing of Pirates. I honestly couldn’t take too much more of what was going on. I had close to no idea what was going on because new storylines were popping up every few minutes and others refused to reach a resolution. Characters are betraying each other left and right which in the ended resulted in my hating of almost every character about half way through without any chance of recovery. Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio deserved to be thanked for another long and rather disappointing screenplay. Odds are if you are a fan of Pirates franchise, you may end up extremely disappointed. The relationship between Elizabeth Swann and Will Turner, like Dead Man’s Chest, is nothing compared to the romantic content of Black Pearl. At times it even seems as if they are more nasty to each other than romantic, even in some of the final scenes in the film.
One thing that the screenplay does that it never has before was explore the psychological realm of Jack Sparrow and get inside the mind that perfectly matches the partial insanity you would expect. While in the desert he commands a crew of Jack Sparrows and little Jacks come out of his dreadlocks like dirty little angels on his shoulders. My favorite scene in the entire film is when a sea of crabs picks up the Black Pearl and carry it across the desert and Jack believes he truly is insane. This leads me to telling you that Johnny Depp’s performance has improved since Dead Man’s Chest partially because of the screenplay. The slapstick that was heavily relied on in the previous film is back to the level of the first where action and humor balanced each other.
The best character featured in the film are the revived Captain Barbossa played by Geoffrey Rush that played the perfect villain in the first film. His character returns once again and is preformed in that classic dark pirate style that was exhibited before. A surprise appearance is also made by Keith Richards as Captain Teague, Jack’s father.
Every other aspect of the film is perfectly fine, but when it comes down to it for this film and many other films… it seems like it is always the screenplay that carries the most problems. In fact looking back at my reviews, it seems like the screenplay can always ruin a well-established concept. Whether it is the fact that screenwriters use too many clichés , lack original ideas, or think that longer is better, I am very hung up that these people who have worked in the industry for years can no longer produce a film that can flow through without hitting any speed bumps or rocky story/character elements.
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of action/adventure violence and some frightening images.
Running time 162 minutes.