Chow Yun-Fat as Captain Sao Feng and Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow in PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END (2007).
© Walt Disney Pictures
Mania Grade: B
Maniac Grade: B
Reviewed Format: Theatrical Release
Rated: PG-13
Stars: Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Geoffrey Rush, Bill Nighy, Tom Hollander, Naomie Harris
Writers: Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio, based on characters created by Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio and Stuart Beattie and Jay Wolpert
Director: Gore Verbinski
Distributor: Walt Disney Pictures
Maniac Grade: B
Reviewed Format: Theatrical Release
Rated: PG-13
Stars: Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Geoffrey Rush, Bill Nighy, Tom Hollander, Naomie Harris
Writers: Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio, based on characters created by Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio and Stuart Beattie and Jay Wolpert
Director: Gore Verbinski
Distributor: Walt Disney Pictures
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END
By: Abbie BernsteinDate: Thursday, May 24, 2007
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, the third but not necessarily in the last of the film series based on the ride at Disneyland, acquits itself well. It’s not as good as the first film, which had both the advantage of surprise and the impulse to be self-contained, but it’s a lot better than the second. This time out, the screenplay by Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio takes few detours for the sake of setpieces. Also, it’s easy to see here what the second film was missing: Geoffrey Rush, who’s back happily munching the scenery as the resurrected, unscrupulous Captain Barbossa.
It would be hard to give away too much of the plot here even if one wanted to, because while there’s a lot of exposition, much of it flies by so fast that it’s hard to keep track of who’s betraying whom, for what reason, and which sort of magic affects what. The set-up is that the guilt-ridden Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) and her beloved Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) join up with Barbossa to retrieve their erstwhile companion Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) from the land of the dead (he got swallowed by a sea monster at the end of Dead Man’s Chest). It seems Jack is needed if the pirate community is going to have any hope of standing against the nefarious East India Trading Company, headed by the coolly ruthless Lord Beckett (Tom Hollander). Beckett has the whole of the region clamped down under his version of martial law, with the spectral ship the Flying Dutchman helping him enforce his will. The Dutchman’s captain, Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) is an immortal who wrangles the souls of the drowned and is really irate about being bound to serve a petty mortal.
This is just the set-up – a score-card may be helpful for those who really want to keep track of what’s going on at all times. The writers understandably don’t want to spend huge amounts of time on explanations, but there are moments when you wish that they’d settle down long enough for certain plot points to sink in. Director Gore Verbinski, who also helmed the two previous installments, pulls out every action stop he can find and then some. The climax is truly stunning, and the filmmakers find time for grace notes along the way, like the starry sky of the “other world” that looks like something out of a poem.
There’s also a pleasingly high swashbuckling content here, harking back to fare like The Three Musketeers and The Princess Bride, bigger than life but not absurd, with flying steel and fancing footwork on dangerously tilting decks. The mythology is kind of cool, though there are so many conditions piled upon the various story developments that there’s some sense this is being made up as the filmmakers go along.
Depp reprises his Oscar-nominated performance with the same mixture of canniness, spaciness and self-absorption that continues to make Jack Sparrow a unique figure – there’s not another character out there quite like this one. Bloom is stalwart as the heroic Will, and Knightley gets to really cut loose here, physically and emotionally, as Elizabeth gets more thoroughly enmeshed in the action. Rush, though, feels like the big beating heart of this enterprise – he goes for the laugh with every line and usually gets it. Nighy again impresses as the tentacled Davy Jones and Naomie Harris suggests a lot of power as the sorceress who brings him back. Hollander finds the core of humanity in the generally hissable Beckett. Chow Yun-Fat, Stellan Skarsgard and Jonathan Pryce also make strong supporting contributions.
