Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

I consider myself to be a reasonable man, I can make decision about something, but have no problem changing my mind if compelling evidence to the contrary presents itself. After watching the first pirates movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, in 2003 to say I was not impressed was putting it mildly. To be honest much of my opinion was influenced by the fact that I was not, and to be completely honest am still not, a huge Johnny Depp fan. Essentially the first pirates movie was a lot of Johnny Depp running around being this quirky pirate captain character, Captain Jack Sparrow. I would have been completely ok if they stopped making the movies at that point, however many, many, many more people disagreed with me and the movie did well enough to warrant the making of not one, but two more movies, shot simultaneously. Last year Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest was a summer block buster, made tons of money and convinced me that maybe I was a little too hard on Mr. Depp and this franchise. I would be less than honest to say I was amped about this summer third installment, but I was certainly curious and anticipating its release. And I can honestly saying I am a Pirates fan.

Rather than give the typical plot summary of the movie to tease and bait you into watching the film, if you haven’t already I want to get straight to the fun part and talk about how I was won over. First of all I have the respect for movies that know what they are and don’t attempt to be anything more. Gore Verbinski, director of all three films in the franchise, and his team made three funny, action filled adventure movies, about the fictional life of one Captain Jack Sparrow and those that were close to him during a certain period in his life. That is it, there is not much more to it than that, there are other characters with their own stories and issues, but for the most part everything comes back to Jack. Therefore the franchise lives and dies with Johnny Depp, I may be a huge fan, but I can respect his abilities and he can definitely do characters in a way no one else can, and there is no clearer indication of that than Captain Jack Sparrow.

In addition to the strength of Johnny’s performance this movie featured an extended cameo from Mr. Yun-Fat Chow - the man, a cameo from Keith Richards, Johnny Depp’s inspiration for Jack Sparrow, who played Jack’s dad, we got the gathering of the pirate lords, we got Jack Sparrow going literally insane and we got a huge at sea battle between Davy Jones, Jack Sparrow, Barbossa, and Cutler Beckett. All of this and nothing in the movie suffered for the inclusion of anything else. The major knock I had against Spiderman 3 was that in order to include the two major villains the villain turned ally, Gwen Stacy, and the Mary and Peter engagement a lot of the story had to suffer in order to get everyone adequate face time on the screen, well Pirates managed to make it work and did it in such a way as to not short change any of the major players. Part of this was accomplished by not even showing Jack Sparrow until about twenty minutes into the movie. The movie did not drag without him, but certainly picked when he was on screen.

In closing I also would be remise if I did not comment on the clarity with which ILM was able to pull off some of the more complex and spectacular visual effects like for example Jack Sparrow stabbing a shirtless version of himself during one of his psychotic episodes. Everything was amazing, the cannon blasts from ship to ship, the Black Pearl reemerging from beneath the water, even the exploding of the East India Tea Company’s mother ship, all of it was amazing, and crisp and very, very pretty. Thank you Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, you may have just saved the summer.

GRADE – A-