Overall Rating
  Awesome: 16.4%
Worth A Look: 31.22%
Average: 20.63%
Pretty Bad: 19.58%
Total Crap: 12.17%
14 reviews, 105 user ratings
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| Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest |
by Justin Helmer
"Keeps to the Code"
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The old axiom, “It’s the singer, not the song,” has rarely been truer than in this sequel to 2003’s surprise blockbuster hit. There is a temptation to lay all the success at the feet of Johnny Depp, yet the fact remains: pull any of the threads on this particular puffy-shirt and it would almost certainly unravel. The story is pure boilerplate—lifting joyously from all the various works in this genre and others that have come before—and I think, then, it must be the joy that separates these efforts and puts them a cut above.So, let’s talk about the story, picking up where we last left these characters at the end of the first movie. Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) is arrested literally on the way to his wedding to Elizabeth Swann (Kiera Knightley) for, you guessed it, helping our loveable Captain Jack Sparrow escape justice. It seems there is a new Sheriff in town, one Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander) and he is a mustache-twirling baddie in the finest Snidely Whiplash tradition. It isn’t long before half the cast of the original movie ends up clapped in irons awaiting a ‘short drop and a quick stop’ at the gallows. Meanwhile, Will makes a devil’s deal with Cutler to save his wife-to-be from death by bringing Jack, and more specifically Jack’s magical compass, back to Cutler.
This is certainly a whole bunch of plot for a summer actioner, and it all flies straight at you almost too fast to catch your breath. If you haven’t seen Curse of the Black Pearl, don’t expect an easy time of it because the first whole section of the movie concerns itself with shit that has already happened in the most oblique way possible.
Jack, meantime, has his own full set of problems to deal with; it seems our man has an outstanding debt to the sea’s biggest baddest badass of them all: Davy Jones (Bill Nighy and a whole bunch of computers). Looking like Cthulhu mated with hell’s own surf-and-turf special, this character represents another leap forward in digital performance. Make no mistake, it is still Nighy that is steering the ship, but for the first time that I can think of, the digital enhancement is actually absolutely essential to the actor’s character choices.
Thirteen years ago, Jack sold his soul to Davy Jones in order to become captain of the Black Pearl, and who should show up to call in the debt? Bootstrap Bill Turner (Stellan Skarsgard and a Starfish) himself, Will’s long-lost father who apparently made a deal of his own to escape death at the hands of Captain Barbosa and Jack’s mutinous crew. (See above in re: needing to see the first film.) Jack ends up promising to get the souls of ninety-nine seamen for Jones in order to satisfy his debt. He sails back to Tortuga and pulls together a crew of new and old faces (some of which are nice little surprises) including Elizabeth, who by this time has escaped from the prison on Port Royal and gone off to rescue Will and bring back the humpty-hump compass.
Jack, being Jack, almost immediately begins double- and triple-crossing everyone in sight, and the screenwriters at this point see fit to throw two more macguffins into the mix in the form of a trunk that holds Davey Jones’s heart and the key that unlocks it. Oh, and then there’s the Kraken that’s chasing Jack and indiscriminately eating ships along the way. The movie weighs in at a hefty two hour-and-thirty-minute running time, which is all just a grandiose setup for Pirates of the Caribbean: at Worlds End which is already in the can having been shot concurrently with this sequel.
All of this is carried along by the buoyancy of the performances. Almost to a person, the cast feels like they could easily be out of place in a big splash-tastic summer thrill ride. With the notable exception of Orlando Bloom’s Will, who feels dangerously close to becoming a part of the set at times, having discovered his acting kit of the five most useful expressions.
Here is where people will come to differ on this movie. Is it too much of a good thing? I say no, although just barely. When the last trick had been turned and the credits rolled, my very first reaction was: It needed to lose at least one, or maybe even two, sub-plots and about fifteen-to-twenty minutes of running time. It felt like I had been sitting at a table gorging myself on rich food while unseen hands kept pushing more in my direction. My wife, however, didn’t notice anything thing of the kind, and when the end came she was looking for more. In any case, you will certainly get your money’s worth and possibly even a bit beyond what you were looking for.In the end, I came to the conclusion that, as I said before, pull any one thread and the whole would become less than the sum of its parts. There still might have been judicious cutting done within certain action set pieces, but then again, what’s the fun of a big summer meal if you don’t eat yourself stupid? I certainly didn’t feel cheated and am looking forward to next summer’s conclusion wholeheartedly.
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link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=14738&reviewer=315
originally posted: 07/10/06 14:27:20
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USA
07-Jul-2006 (PG-13)
DVD: 05-Dec-2006
UK
06-Jul-2006 (12A)
Australia
06-Jul-2006 (M)
![[trailer]](/images/icon/trailericon.gif) Trailer
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