Better than before

Rating: 7/10 (27 May 2007)

Good or bad, this was always going to be one of the biggest blockbusters of the year, just as its critically-decried predecessor did enormous business: the fans were going to see it anyway. I know, because I'm one of them.
And good or bad, it was never going to benefit from the sheer surprise factor of the original smash hit -- like it or not, "Pirates" is a franchise now, and the public knows what to expect. Bigger-better-badder: a sequel has nowhere to go but to up the ante, with more ships, more characters and more supernatural spookery.
The good news is -- this time round, it works, more or less.
Ten minutes in, and I was thinking 'they've blown it again'; flashy camera-work, showy stunts, suspect history, pieces of eight -- but not an ounce of magic. The film appeared to be going through the motions of a standard Hollywood blockbuster, but it was just too crowded, loud and perfunctory to raise a smile, let alone to raise hearts.
Cut to desolation. Cut to empty salt. Cut to one man -- however many of him there are -- and with room to expand and to breathe, the film finally finds its feet, and its salvation. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised; after all, the first film was little more than historical pastiche.... until it hit upon Captain Jack Sparrow.
Jack's back, and this time the writers seem to have got a grip on what makes the character effective. In "Dead Man's Chest", too often he came across as a caricature, trying too hard to recapture the accidental appeal of the first film. Here, by luck or judgement, he pulls it off as of old. Playing it solo in his first scene here -- given time for action, reaction and disgusted response -- Johnny Depp turns in one of the best sequences in the whole film.
Escalation is always a risky business, and "At World's End" undoubtedly suffers from too much plot. (Ironically, it also has large holes; Cutler Beckett remains a cipher throughout, with no clue as to his history and actions save his apparent incarnation of "good business". His end is as blank and unexplained as his origins.) However, the film gets away with escalating its supernatural element still further, with a trip past the end of the world and the invocation of the goddess who first set Davy Jones on his grisly path. It even manages to establish Elizabeth Swann in an improbable ascendancy via a series of plausible explanations, rather than by straining the feminist superhero line too far -- although I still find her sudden acquisition of two-handed swordsmanship from the second film a trifle hard to swallow! Unlike its immediate predecessor, the picture generally avoids the gratuitous set-piece sequences that produced the impression that we were watching the game of the film: no pirate kebab, three-way duel or water-wheel balancing here. There is some rather over-the-top flying around the rigging, but at least there's some swashbuckling precedent to that -- although not quite to this (computer-generated?) extreme...
The body-count is lavish, mainly of the usual anonymous extras of whom every ship seems to carry an enormous number... but named characters are not immune either, and the film isn't afraid to deliver one or two real jolts which considerably raise its impact. About halfway through we think we know what's going to happen (it's been pretty plainly telegraphed, and neatly ties up the ends): well, it doesn't.
This film isn't as confused as "Dead Man's Chest" and I'd say that it has better dialogue, although most of the resonant lines go to Barbossa and Tia Dalma. Due to the vast cast list (frankly, too large) most of the characters get relatively little time on-screen, their motivations being assumed to have been set up in the previous film; and since most of the motivation-setting was fairly turgid stuff, this is an improvement. The major disappointment is Keira Knightley, who has a fairly major role and produces a number of dismally flat line readings at various points in the process: her hoydenish Elizabeth in the first film was more credible than her pirate part here.
Overall, I think this was a project too ambitious, and if there are more spin-offs to come, as I dare say there will be, the producers would do well to learn the lesson and stick to one treasure, one curse, and one adversary at a time. It's a pity this film can't stand on its own without its disappointing second instalment. But there's still fun to be had amid the apocalyptic pretensions -- it could have been very much worse.