Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. Directed by Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg. Starring Johnny Depp. Rating: Rating: 6 (out of 10).
It’s been a long six years since the last Pirates of the Caribbean movie was released, a span of time roughly equivalent to the seemingly endless third Pirates instalment, At World’s End.
The newest film in the Disney franchise is leaner but far from fighting fit. While writer Jeff Nathanson wisely shed some of the excess narrative that weighed down the previous two films to focus on the swashbuckling camp of the original, Dead Men is a tired version of its younger self, and a sure sign that Johnny Depp should sail off into the sunset for good.
Fourteen years have passed since the unlikely film-based-on-a-theme-park-ride gamble paid off big time for Jerry Bruckheimer and the execs at Disney. The film is directed by Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg. The Norwegian duo has great credentials, coming off their Oscar nomination a few years back for Kon-Tiki (another aquatic film, about adventurer Thor Heyerdahl). Their deftness with the material keeps things moving at an entertaining clip; it’s not their fault that the premise may have run its course.
The studio is testing the waters with a new generation of Depp sidekicks designed to attract younger viewers and see if the franchise has (sea) legs. There’s Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites), the son of Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann (Orlando Bloom and Kiera Knightly, both of whom have cameos), and astronomer/accused heretic Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario), who completes the at-times-awkward love triangle.
Alas, thanks to a wretched curse, Jack’s ship and crew have been downsized dramatically: they’re encapsulated in a corked bottle.
All three are in search of requisite MacGuffin the Trident of Poseidon, which will break all those pesky curses haunting the seven seas. And between the Kraken, skeleton crews, Aztec gold and mythical swords, the Pirates films have taught us that there are many.
But a new adversary is after Jack: Armando Salazar (Javier Bardem) enlists the help of Henry and Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush, back from Stranger Tides) to exact revenge. A flashback to their initial meeting explains Captain Salazar’s rage (and uses some movie magic to make Depp look even fresher-faced than he was when he shot those 21 Jump Street episodes on the North Shore).
The undead Bardem has a ball with his role, plus he gets to spit the iconic “dead men tell no tales” line. As far as the boy-meets-girl plot thread goes, newcomer Scodelario proves leagues more watchable than poor Thwaites, whose character is blanched and underwritten. And Depp reprises his lovable letch role, though somewhat less convincingly. I don’t want to blame the downward spike of Depp’s offscreen likeability factor, but it certainly makes his drunken-uncle routine a little less charming.
The real star is the film’s special effects, which start off at a gallop with an early heist. There is some spectacular water-level cinematography from DOP Paul Cameron, a Pirates newcomer. However, the effects get over-zealous by the film’s finale, resulting in some unintentionally watery-looking green screen moments.
Dead Men Tell No Tales is a passably entertaining romp, a must for Pirates fans, and proof that the wind has gone out of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise’s sails.
