Director: Joachim Rønning, Espen Sandberg
Starring: Johnny Depp, Javier Bardem, Geoffrey Rush, Brenton Thwaites, Kaya Scodelario, Golshifteh Farahani, Kevin McNally
Run time: 129 mins
There’s only that much that can salvage the fifth part of a franchise based on an attraction in Disney’s theme park. Unlike the adventure park ride, this franchise does not seem to end, but is staunchly stuck in a loop of endless chases and industrial attempts at comedy.
Since the first part in 2003, Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) has been running away in a series of chases from the “bad pirates”. Five movies and 14 years later, not much has changed, except now we have a younger generation of pirates joining the visibly aged Sparrow on yet another expedition. This time we have Will Turner’s (Orlando Bloom) son Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites) looking to break his father’s curse and is joined by Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario), an astronomer and horologist (yes, it does yield several ‘whore’ jokes) trying to fulfill her father’s dream. The two are unintentionally, yet intentionally, helped by Jack Sparrow.
Depp, as Sparrow, now looks like a washed-out rockstar of yesteryear fame, who has just walked into a rehab. His one-liners still evoke the most laughter, but for every one liner you endure 15 minutes of deathly boring and hackneyed adventure. And this is slightly more than a two hour long film. Now do the math.
When the dust settles down in an adventure drama, or at least in the good ones, you find quieter moments of wisdom, which you may hear as a kid but the penny only drops much later as an adult. One such moment is when Alice says to Depp’s Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland (2010), “You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are.” But in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Depp, as a perpetually drunk Sparrow, can barely form a coherent sentence. And despite Captain Hector Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) sharing an emotionally intimate moment with Carina, the filmmakers Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg let the opportunity go by.
The film is riddled with similar missed opportunities but the most unforgiving one is the utter waste of exemplary actors like Javier Bardem and Golshifteh Farahani, the former playing the antagonist Captain Salazar and latter depicting an inconsequential character called Shansa.
The makers channelised all their energy, and possibly finances, in the computer-generated imagery (CGI) for this film. And it shows. That’s one department in which the film seems have evolved in the right direction through the years. Although taking this franchise further for only this reason is like marrying a attractive person only for his/her appearance. We all know that won’t last beyond the honeymoon phase. And with this edition, we’re already way past that.
(The article first appeared in The Hindu CinemaPlus.)