Review: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
reviewed by Sam Osborn

rating: 3.0 out of 4

Director: Gore Verbinski
Screenplay: Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio
Cast: Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley
MPAA Classification: PG-13 (intense sequences of adventure violence,
including frightening images)

More, more, more seems to be the theme running through Pirates of the
Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. There's more adventure, more violence,
more pirates, and more myth. Not to mention that two and a half hour
running length. But while Superman Returns may have dragged some in its
150 minutes, Pirates hurtles along at a pace only expected from the
offspring of a Disneyland theme-ride, rarely slowing for piddling bits
of nonsense like, oh say, story. Of course, story's not the point of
these flicks and it surely doesn't have to be. There's
entertainment enough to be had without all the other hodgepodge. And
Pirates 2, for all its expansion, manages to dodge common sequelitis
pitfalls. It doesn't overdose on a memorable character from the
original (cough, Matrix Revolutions, cough) or over-broaden it's
scope (cough, Matrix Reloaded,cough). Dead Man's Chest is a
continuation of the original Pirates adventure, just with a couple
extra unmarked sails tacked onto its deck.

The plot has something to do with ole' Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny
Depp, of course) and his debt to Davy Jones (Bill Nighy). Debts, as
we've all learned by now, are not things Mr. Sparrow is most
proficient at repaying. The Dead Man's Chest factors in as it holds
Mr. Jones' beating heart, which was ravaged by the likes of a lady
whom he loved in the past. The English Navy blowhards also seem to be
after the chest, and blackmail William Turner (Orlando Bloom) to seek
out Capt. Jack's magic compass, which supposedly points toward the
treasure. Held in a cell is Will's fiancé, Elizabeth Swan (Kiera
Knightley), under charges of assisting Capt. Jack in the franchise's
last swashbuckler. What it boils down to is a mottled mess of a chase
to find the key to Davey Jones' chest, and avoiding his gargantuan
beast, the Kraken.

The myth itself wrings deeper than the original's, with Davey Jones
and his seafood cohorts rendered with an unholy amount of CGI goodness
to make them squirm convincingly in all their scaly, slippery evil. But
the plot doesn't hold much water, same as the first, though plot was
never the point. As long as it paints a tastily mythological backdrop
for our pirates to plunder, we're kept smiling. And even though the
picture has all the weight of a paperclip, the franchise has at least
matured since it's last time around. The mood has thickened and no
longer can we tell that the film is a shameless translation of its
Disneyland ride. Writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio take efforts to
develop each of our three heroes separately, using individual sub-plots
to fill in the otherwise empty molds left dry from the original. Will
Turner has a family reunion with his father (Stellan Skarsgard),
enslaved by Davy Jones and appearing as though he's slowly evolving
into a starfish. Will's fiancé, Ms. Swan, escapes from her cell and
hides as a stowaway on a trade vessel. And Jack, of course still
functioning as the star of the show, develops his slimier persona with
delectable cowardice and deception. Ironic that the teenagers of
America have chosen Mr. Sparrow as their most prized character in film.
Oh, wait, that honor instead belongs to Napoleon Dynamite. Perhaps we
should be nervous about our country's future?

Anyway, along with the characters the adventure is also thickened
heartily; though probably not by consequence of the writing, but
instead because of the greatly inflated budget. Our friends are
volleyed about the seas, facing the enormous sea monster, the Kraken,
whose plunger-like tentacles crumple vessels like copy-paper. Swordplay
is more indulgent too, with Verbinksi going so far as to mount a
chivalric swordfight inside a huge, rolling waterwheel as it bounces
along the island's foliage. Verbinski juggles these stunts with ease,
proving once again his filmmaking versatility. If you'll remember all
the way back to last October (I know, in Hollywood-time nine months is
an epoch) Verbinski made a quiet, gloomy little character study called
The Weather Man. And before that, Verbinski also directed The Ring and
Captain Jack's first adventure in 2003. Yup, this guy's the real
deal. In the waterwheel sequence, Verbinski chooses not to succumb to
any mere CGI trickery, and mounts a camera on the wheel's axis to
show that at one point he forced Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom to
swordfight on a giant spinning wooden wheel. And he's more artistic
than your typical Brett Ratner-esque director, finding a visual
aesthetic perfect for a pirate's tale.

But art and pretentious critic fodder aside, Dead Man's Chest is
great entertainment. It's rich and exciting and chock-full of Captain
Jack-isms for high schoolers to repeat over and again. And the life of
pirates is still a chunk of history that Hollywood has been unwilling
to bite into for a while. Pirates of the Caribbean, for all its
feathery, lightweight fun, gorges on this chunk and keeps us hooked on
the adventure, waiting along with all the local eighth and ninth
graders next year for the midnight showing of Captain Jack's trilogy
capper.

-www.samseescinema.com