Film Reviews

Pirates of the Caribbean 2

• Rating:
• Director: Gore Verbinski
• Starring: Johnny Depp
• Details: US, 120mins, 12A.

Forced to take on a mission in exchange to free fiancee Elizabeth Swann (Knightley) from jail, Will Turner (Bloom) hunts down pirate Jack Sparrow (Depp) for a magical compass that may or may not lead to the location of Davy Jones' (Nighy) - the undead captain of the ghost ship The Flying Dutchman - legendary treasure chest. But with the untrustworthy Sparrow locked into a blood oath with Jones, which he will do absolutely anything (and I mean anything) to get out of it, it seems that Turner's quest will not be all that easy.
Gore Verbinski returns to tongue-in-cheek humour after a sojourn directing the sombre, downbeat The Weather Man and delivers an explosive, swashbuckling, fun-filled, ridiculous pirate action movie. Dead Man's Chest doesn't follow any rules with regards to narrative thread as the film is propelled by back stabbings, deals, double-deals and triple-crosses; hurtling the story from one cock-up headlong into the next. Depp is on fire and really lets fly as the cad Sparrow; spouting so many one-liners and off the cuff remarks, your head will be in a dizzy by the end. There are a number of hilarious set pieces: the imprisoned pirates trying to swing their cage over a yawning chasm, Sparrow on a spit, a three-way sword fight on a rolling treadmill, Verbinski keeps them coming at a relentless pace. However, when Sparrow is not on screen, the movie doesn't work. Bloom - condemned to play the straight man to Depp's outlandish camp bounder - is as dry as a nun's knickers and his comic timing is so off the mark, he could easily land a job dubbing bad '70s German porn. The plot too gets a little muddled and bogged down as it attempts to delve into darker depths than the first outing but that's nitpicking. If you ever wanted to know what a pirate movie on an overdose of laughing gas is like, this is it.

Review by Gavin Burke