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The third chapter of the Pirates of the Caribbean saga
mercifully brings the franchise to a close, I hope — and though the
story makes little sense, it is an improvement over part two and delivers
some impressive visual sights, which has always been the series’
strong point. Logic and coherence go out the window when director Gore
Verbinski is at the helm, but you can rest assured that he’ll provide
enough eye candy to give you visual diabetes. At World’s End picks up where Dead Man’s Chest left off: Capt. Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) has been
swept away to Davy Jones’ Locker and the trio of Capt. Barbossa
(Geoffrey Rush), Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), and Elizabeth Swann (Keira
Knightley) set off to bring him back. When they finally track Sparrow down,
the hellish locale they find him in is likely to upset the young ones in
the audience, because it is truly disturbing, and Sparrow himself has been
transformed into something much less attractive than what we’ve
become accustomed to. Once back in the land of the living, Sparrow becomes
embroiled in a convoluted plot that somehow involves a battle between the
Nine Lords of the Brethren Court (a.k.a. the worst of pirates) and Lord
Beckett, the East India Company, and supernatural forces. Somehow this
involves endless meetings, double-crosses, confusion, and, worst of all,
boredom until the next action sequence. Unfortunately, Verbinski labors
under the notion that too much is never enough. There’s a fine line
between entertaining viewers and bludgeoning them — and Verbinski
crosses it with abandon every time he’s required to fill the screen
with pyrotechnics. The furious pace of the editing hardly helps the
eyestrain. Once the dust finally settles, after nearly three
hours, there’s a hint that more pirate adventures with Sparrow and
the crew may be in the offing. How much more Verbinski can wring from these
characters remains to be seen.
This article appears in May 17-23, 2007.
