FILM - "Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest"

It is unfair to call Dead Man’s Chest a Pirates of the Caribbean movie. This is a Pirate of the Carribean film, based less on the Disneyworld ride, and even less on pirates, so much as on one specific pirate, Captain Jack Sparrow, the most gleeful anti-hero since Harrison Ford’s Han Solo or Indiana Jones. (It’s also funny to see Johnny Depp playing the lead in another movie that has “Dead Man” in the title: those of you still not convinced that Depp is the greatest actor ever need only watch Jim Jarmusch’s similarly titled feature to see Depp’s range.) Though this role is no stretch from Depp’s last outing as Sparrow, he manages to keep it fresh—buoyant, in fact—and it would be fair to say that he carries the whole movie on his shoulders. From his flamboyant movements while bound to a giant pole to his constant pratfalls and facial mannerisms, it's clear that Depp enjoys being Sparrow, and that joy does more to keep the film afloat than the marvelous digital gimmickry.

Is Bill Nighy, as the carbuncled Davy Jones, not an entertaining villain? Of course he is: but he’s so computer generated, and so on the periphery that it’s hard to see him as part of the film, and not just an effect (whereas Geoffrey Rush, as Barbossa, was a real foil for Depp.) Another effect is Orlando Bloom’s "heroic" Will Turner, who is now even more of a “bootstrap”--just tagging along for the ride--than ever. And though it’s expected of them, the crew of the Black Pearl is still just comic relief or fodder for the various aquatic monsters (like the Kraken) that populate this film. Only Keira Knightly is provided with a bit of development, growing more badass, more the ravishing beauty. Oh, there are some good moments shared between two of the formerly skeletal pirates from the first film (one of them’s Mackenzie Crook, from BBC’s The Office), but these are trimmings, not the main course.

The course itself is problematic too: just as Jack’s compass now points in various directions, so does the film, which stresses the arrogant (yet well-dressed) British sea empire as much as it does the villainous squid-crew of Jones’s Flying Dutchman. It makes little sense for certain characters like Norrington to be allowed into this sequel (though Jack Davenport plays him well) and the main narrative thrust—Jack’s search for a means to renegotiate his debt with Davy Jones (his soul)—is constantly being thwarted by writers trying to cram all the characters from the first film into the sequel. As a result, the action is not as relentless or charismatic as the first film, though once the ball gets rolling (or in this case, a giant waterwheel) it’s impossible not to get swept away.

The problem with Dead Man’s Chest is not Gore Verbinski’s direction—he is just as solid and proficient here as in the first, and still has a marvelous sense of lighting. The problem is that this is the first part of a longer film (the final chapter, At World’s End, is filming now) and lacks a resolution. The only real difference between Dead Man’s Chest’s ending and that of The Empire Strikes Back is that for Star Wars, that was the best film in the series, and the darkest point of the franchise. For Pirates, this was just more or less of the same, and while you’ll be hard pressed to find people who honestly didn’t enjoy the antics and japes of Depp and company, it’ll be harder to find people who didn’t enjoy the first one a lot more.