My Money's Worth on Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (originally posted on my multiply site)
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| photo taken from celebritywonder.ugo.com |
The World is Flat!
At least that’s what the movie Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End proved. I just watched it last night. This makes me three out of three in making reviews about the Pirates movies. I started with the first one a couple years back, then made another about the less than satisfying sequel, and I complete the hat trick with this one.
Let me just say, to start it all off, that I was more than satisfied with the way this movie was played. I heard a lot of people complain about the length of the movie but, personally, I did not notice it. It hardly had any of those long sequences with nothing but dialogue like the Lord of the Rings movies (though I’d still watch those even if they took nine hours long each.)
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| Chow Yun Fat as Sao Feng (photo taken from movies.ign.com) |
The movie ties up most if not all of the loose ends in the whole story about Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), and Liz Swann (Keira Knightly). Will and Liz, with the help of Hector Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), their enemy in the first installment, seek to bring back Sparrow from the otherworld, where he was sent by virtue of his being devoured with the Black Pearl by the Kraken, the huge squid monster under the control of Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) of the Flying Dutchman.
In order to do so, they enlist the aid of Sao Feng (Chow Yun Fat), and set sail for the end of the world with the use of a boat of his and the ever-changing chart. They are also being pursued by the British Armada behind the leadership of Cutler Beckett of the East Indian Trading Company.
This sets off yet another adventure that is not too much a swashbuckling film, but still filled with lots of action sequences and maritime wonder that makes it a very enjoyable film in whole. They go to the world’s end, come back to meet other pirate lords, and fight the British Armada, the fleet that brags of being, in history, the one that eliminated the pirate threat in the seas.
There, I made synopsis as general as I can in order to avoid any more comments about giving out spoilers… though, like my Spider-Man 3 review, I think most of the people will have watched the movie before reading this article.
The three main actors were definitely satisfying in this film. Johnny Depp showed a more subdued Jack Sparrow but still was crazy and enjoyable to watch. He didn’t even use the word “savvy” until the last few sequences. Although the witty and funny remarks were still there, he was more controlled, less whacky, and more mainstream, if Jack Sparrow could ever be mainstream. Depp pulled off the role well enough. I miss, though, the whackier Sparrow that was in the first film and more or less was there in the second one. Maybe it was the demand of the script that he become more subdued, but it took something from Captain Jack, I’d like to think. Nevertheless, Depp still brilliantly portrayed the role and should be receiving lots of congratulatory greetings from his fellow actors.
Orlando Bloom’s Will Turner was a man on a mission. Unable to trust his wife because of what he saw towards the end of the previous film (now that is NOT a spoiler as it happened in the PREVIOUS film), he feels that he is losing Elizabeth to something, or someone, and thus he sets his sights on freeing his father from the bonds that Davy Jones put on him. Bloom displays the seriousness of Turner sufficiently, giving off a quiet sense of purpose that cannot be strayed and for which he will do everything he can to achieve.
Keira Knightly was still as delicious to look at on screen as ever. She balanced the beauty and toughness really well as Liz. The character was well-played and was different from most ladies in distress characters… in fact her character wasn’t in distress at all. She held her own against the pirates and the pirate lords of the movie and was really one bad ass heroine. And a good-looking one at that! Her character comes from the line of kickass heroines dating from Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar in Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Max (Jessica Alba in Dark Angel), as well as Sidney (Jennifer Garner in Alias) and Selene (Kate Beckinsale in Underworld). She has continued to provide movie goers with a face to dream about when they go home after watching the movie.
Geoffrey Rush played a great Hector Barbossa. Although his role has also tamed a bit from the bent-on-revenge character that he was in the first installment of the Pirates movies, he still brings a presence to the screen that merits attention.
Bill Nighy gave new character to the melancholic Captain Davy Jones. In the movie, we are enlightened about the appearance of Jones and his real story. And Nighy penetrates all the tentacles of his face to express the emotions of the pirate version of Charon of the Greek underworld. His eyes, though not really that big, display a range of emotions that add to the character of Jones (and the frisky tentacles also help).
The rest of the supporting cast was alright. They were, at the very least, stable in their roles throughout the movie. Naomi Harris was good enough as the voodoo witch Tia Dalma, though I believe that her character was underutilized. After Barbossa found out her true nature and was able to flesh it out, her role started deteriorating. Yes she was able to provide a critical element for the climax of the film, but I felt as if it was lacking. Her reaction to what was done to her was needy of more action.
Chow Yun Fat portrayed an average Sao Fan. My only regret is that they spent so much time with his character and too less on the other pirate lords that the importance of the others seemed diminished. More balanced exposure would have led to a more intriguing story, I believe.
Editing and scoring for the movie was superb. I really liked the way the music really augmented the action on the screen. Same goes for editing.
In the end, At World’s End tied up most of the plot questions that arose with the first two movies and I think successfully did so, while leaving a little more for fan fiction writers to fantasize about.
Disney capped off this trilogy with a huge success, and all that without having to show too much skin (kind of hard to do since this is a pirate movie) and not too much blood (though stabbing someone through the chest should always result in blood). All in all, this was, I think, one of the most enjoyable movies that I ever watched, ranking with the first installment of the same title in the upper half. And to think that it had taken on a more serious tone.
I only hope that these kinds of movies, while generally spurned by the public because of the daunting number of its duration (this ran for almost three hours), continue to flourish in a movie industry that seems to be losing its creativity and never-endingly look for stories from the east to adapt.
Read my other old movie reviews at my multiply site. Click here!
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