Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
5/27/07
It's
a fact of modern box office life: some sequels are so highly anticipated
that there is no possibility that they will fail financially. And
thus, there is no possibility that the studio will not put a third movie
into production. Back in the late 80's, the always inventive (though
not always in a good way) Robert Zemeckis recognized these facts and asked
“why not just make the second and third movies at the same time?”
The resulting Back to the Future Parts 2 & 3 were at times brilliant
(mostly in Part 2) and at times just vamping to fill out the running
time (that would be Part 3) but either way, they set a precedent
that haunts blockbuster fans to this day. After the joyous explosion
of swashbuckling quirkiness that was Pirates of the Caribbean:
The Curse of the Black Pearl, back-to-back sequels were commissioned,
telling a sprawling two-part story of curses and betrayals that could easily
have been fit into a single lean film. Last summer, we watched the
murky, downbeat Dead Man's Chest vamp to kill its' two and a half
hour running time. Now, at last, we get the goods. Pirates
of the Caribbean: At World's End is also too long for its' own
good, but the fat is pretty much exclusively in the first hour, and once
it kicks into gear... WOW!
Captain
Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) is dead, killed by the Kraken at the end of
the previous film. But in order to convene a meeting of the Nine
Pirate Lords, Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley), Will Turner (Orlando Bloom)
and the newly resurrected Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) must bring him
back. To do that, they acquire a unique set of sailing charts from
the feared Pirate Lord Sao Feng (Chow Yun-Fat). Alas, they're not
all on the same page: more than anything, Will wants to find a way
to save his father Bootstrap Bill (Stellan Skarsgard) from his cursed service
aboard the Flying Dutchman, whose undead Captain Davy Jones (Bill Nighy),
is now bound to the service of the East Indian Trading Company. The
Company's evil leader, Lord Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander) has come into
possession of Jones' heart, giving him full control of the power of the
Dutchman and its' mutant crew, and he will stop at nothing to wipe the
Pirate population from the face of the Earth. After all, that's “just
good business”. But once our heroes have brought the now even crazier
Jack back from World's End, his own desire to take Jones' place as the
Dutchman's immortal Captain adds still more intrigue to the mix.
Can the Pirates of the world join together for a final battle against the
Capitalist forces that seek to crush them forever?
Yeah,
I know, attempting to synopsize the plot of At World's End is a
lot like the old spinning plate trick: there are so many characters,
so many curses, and so many secret agendas, it's best to just sit back
and let it all wash over you while waiting for the spectacle. And
in that area, this Pirates sequel does not disappoint. Unlike
Dead
Man's Chest, which couldn't find a way to attach enough plot to things
like that three-man spinning wheel swordfight to make them pop as action
sequences, At World's End hangs just enough real-life relevance
to its' stakes of individual liberty vs. Big Business greed to makes its'
setpieces more than just an exercise in FX overkill. I'll be the
first to admit that when you lay the whole story flat and try to explain
everything, there are plenty of loose ends and plot holes, but the film
is true enough to the characters and their spirit that I'm willing to say
“Huh? Well, whatever...” and move on.
I think
we benefit from the fact that the back-to-back sequel machine didn't run
smoothly enough to have At World's End finished (or even half-finished)
by the time Dead Man's Chest was released last summer, and the film
has managed to learn from many of its' predecessor's mistakes. There's
newfound depth and characterization to Jones and his curse, particularly
in the revelation that his lost love was for a bound Sea Goddess who's
inhabiting one of the film's characters. We learn about the Flying
Dutchman's real mission and how the heartless Jones corrupted it and his
crew, and things that had seemed pointlessly cruel and icky the last time
out now make sense. Also, writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio have
managed to cut down on the double, triple, quadruple, quintuple, sextuple,
septuple and octuple-crosses that pretty much obliterated the characters
in Dead Man's Chest. Not everyone is on the same page here,
and there are betrayals aplenty, but everyone is trying to do what they
feel is the right thing, and no one sacrifices their friends' lives just
to buy a few minutes of escape time. There's also a return to the
lighter, wink-and-nod regard the original Pirates had toward the
dishonesty that's a Buccaneer's stock in trade rather than the more angsty
tone of the first sequel. And I can't tell you how glad I was to
see the movie back away from the notion of a Will-Elizabeth-Jack love triangle.
I mean, come on, I know the ladies love Johnny Depp, but Jack is one smelly-looking
Pirate!
As
I mentioned, the final hour delivers the goods and then some: a climactic
battle between the Dutchman and the Black Pearl around a swirling maelstrom
with swordfights by the dozens, one of the coolest movie weddings ever,
and a very clever resolution to the question of how to kill Jones when
someone must inherit his curse. Plus, any resemblance between the
final actions of Beckett and a certain unpopular President is purely intentional.
What's most impressive about the whole climactic battle is that At World's
End is one of the few FX spectaculars I've ever seen that gave me the
sense that it never had to cut away from anything to save on the
effects budget. The swirling, fluid camerawork while Jack and Jones
fight atop the Dutchman in the middle of the maelstrom is astonishing.
In terms of its' ability to make the unreal real through the use of the
same shot selections you'd find in a movie with no fish people, it's in
the same league as The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
With
more to do, the performances are better this time out as well. Boy,
did Dead Man's Chest ever miss Rush, who brings back so much spirit
and fun as Barbossa. He and Depp recapture their combative chemistry
without a hitch and Rush is able to make the turn from 1st movie villain
to sequel hero without sacrificing any of his character's sneaky core.
Knightley really comes into her own as the Governor's Daughter turned Pirate
Queen, and her big speech at the turn of the third act is genuinely rousing.
Bloom is best when he's at his most virtuous, and he shakes off the darker
shadings of Dead Man's Chest to relocate the Will Turner he played
in the original. Depp's original, Oscar-nominated performance has
a butterfly wings quality that makes it really hard to duplicate after
everyone's praised and dissected it, but he does seem more comfortable
in Jack's shoes this time. On the other hand, I hope the sequences
where the increasingly batty Captain has imaginary conversations with himself
keep the kids entertained, because they're not exactly his finest hour.
Among
the supporting cast, Nighy shines beneath all the Davy Jones effects:
this may be the finest Motion Capture performance yet committed to film.
Skarsgard is never less than reliable (well, there was King Arthur,
but he was at least a hoot in that), and he once again adds emotional heft
to the proceedings. Hollander has an evil ball as Beckett.
And the background players, from Lee Arenberg and MacKenzie Crook as silly
pirates to Kevin McNally and David Bailie as their British counterparts,
are once again a delight. On the other hand, I love Chow Yun Fat
as much as anybody, and he does what he can, but Sao Feng's scenes do nothing
but pad the running time. In fact, his final exchanges with Elizabeth
smack of material referencing plot developments that were later dropped
or rewritten. And everything the sequel did to make Jack Davenport's
Norrington more complex and interesting had been jettisoned this time in
favor of a cameo that finds him pretty much exactly the same guy he was
when we first met him.
Summer
blockbusters as good as Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of
the Black Pearl are hard to come by, as are sequels as good as the
original. At World's End is neither of these things, but it
does manage to give you everything you could ask for in wrapping up the
adventures of Sparrow, Swann and Turner. It even provides a nice
opening to keep the plates spinning should the cast ever agree to hoist
sail for a Pirates 4. But next time, let's just do the one,
OK? |
