Unpredictable and exciting

Rating: 8/10 (24 July 2007)

At one point in the latest Pirates of the Caribbean film, At World's End, one very minor returning character remarks of our returning hero Jack Sparrow: "Do you think he plans it all out or just makes it up as he goes along?" The same could easily be said of Pirates writers Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio. Once more, with At World's End, we are faced with a plot that, like its central character, is completely unpredictable, swinging one way and then the other. Naturally, this is both the great charm of the Pirates franchise and of the roguish anti-hero himself but also its achilles heel. For every unexpected twist, there is a sequence of incredibly confusing double crosses that simply bog the plot down.
One thing is for certain with the third Pirates film. This is no ordinary Disney summer blockbuster, Elliot and Rossio, along with director Gore Verbinski and uber-producer Jerry Bruckheimer, make some bold and surprising choices in the plot. The film opens on a mass hanging of men, women and even children known to be pirates or associates of pirates. This sets a tone that manages to be genuinely dark while still providing the light touch of the previous films. Meanwhile, Elliot, Rossio and Verbinski have no qualms about killing off some quite significant characters from the earlier films. One, in particular, has very little part to play in At World's End but manages a notably affecting final scene as our heroes attempt to return from their rescue of Jack, confined to Davy Jones' Locker.
Indeed, the first third of At World's End, the rescue of Jack, could have made an excellent movie in itself as it is the sequence in which the film is at its most visually inventive and spectacular. Once again, Pirates of the Caribbean benefits from quite excellent production design, cinematography and computer effects. While the resurrected Barbossa sails the Black Pearl's former crew on a junk from Singapore through icy seas and giant waterfalls, Jack is going slowly insane. The scenes of Jack in the locker are over disappointingly briefly as they offer particularly weird fantasies, from the Pearl isolated in a desert crewed by multiple Jacks to the wonderfully strange pebble crabs. Meanwhile, Geoffrey Rush is a delight, back as Barbossa and gleefully chewing the scenery and almost stealing the movie from Johnny Depp. Less evil but possibly more mad than his Curse of the Black Pearl incarnation, Barbossa is the perfect person to lead the crew to losing themselves in the land of the dead, cackling brilliantly as the ship spills over the huge waterfall. Meanwhile, his bickering with Jack as they both attempt to take control of the Pearl is brilliant.
The final battle is equally amazing, providing a spectacle like nothing you've ever seen before as the Black Pearl battles Davy Jones' fish people crew on the Flying Dutchman. The CGI effects are seamless here, even as tentacles and water fly everywhere it looks perfectly real. The sequence is exhilarating and packed with action all over, Jack fighting Davy Jones atop the Dutchman's mast for the chest is a stand out moment. However, the centre piece is the impromptu wedding held in the very brief pauses between the violent action. This scene has everything, genuinely exhilarating action mixed with the breezy comedy of the whole series, Rush presiding over things superbly as Barbossa and Orlando Bloom's Will and Keira Knightley's Elizabeth finally showing the spark and chemistry that Knightley had with Depp in the last film. There are even more twists and turns as the grand battle sequence ends in a distinctly surprising but clever way.
This is not to say that At World's End is a classic from beginning to end. Those who had problems with Dead Man's Chest's messy and sometimes confusing plot will find little to counter their complaints here. The central portion is a confusing mess of double and triple crosses as it is impossible to follow the very allegiances and motivations of the central characters. This all builds up to a scene where the various pirate lords gather to squabble and debate and vote. While it is nice that every time the pirates attempt to get together and unite against a common enemy they end up squabbling and brawling, this becomes a little tiresome and has none of the fun of the bar brawl in Dead Man's Chest. However, one good moment does come in Keith Richards' surprisingly competent and charismatic performance.
Bloom and Knightley have come in for some unwarranted flak for their earlier performances but here they do occasionally struggle with the material. Knightley is unable to convincingly pull off the rousing speech she is given before the final battle while Bloom, always perfectly cast as the moral straight man hero Will, hasn't the talent or the range to cope with Will's turning to darker and more confused motivations. However, the chemistry they have discovered between them allows you to forgive these blips because you are finally routing for Will and Elizabeth to be together, resulting in an ending that proves genuinely romantic in a very unexpected way, their final scene also providing a very un-Disney not very subtle suggestion of sex.
While the ending leaves things open for a Pirates 4, this story would appear to tie things up nicely for Will and Elizabeth. Certainly, the possibly excessive imagination on show here implies Elliot and Rossio have enough left in them for a few more pirate adventures. Probably, it would be better for future instalments of the series to be individual stand alone stories rather than back-to-back sequels, however, taking Dead Man's Chest and At World's End as a whole, what we are left with is one grand, ambitious, long, hubristic, messy, beautiful, funny, exciting, confusing, unexpected, spectacular and, above all, supremely entertaining story. ****