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Rating: 6/10 (27 May 2007)

At this point in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" series, the plot lines have become so convoluted and twisted around each other that it is no longer possible to tell the players without a program - or at least without having done some serious boning up beforehand on all that transpired in the two previous entries. That is probably the strongest criticism one can level against "At World's End," an otherwise reasonably entertaining addition to the phenomenally lucrative "Pirates" franchise.
Written by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio and directed by Gore Verbinski, "At World's End" picks up where "Dead Man's Chest" left off, with Elizabeth, Will and the recently resurrected Barbossa going in search of Jack Sparrow, who has been consigned to a watery grave courtesy of the Kraken, a sea creature who serves at the behest of the notorious Davy Jones. In this episode, Beckett, the Chairman of the East India Trading Company, has begun to hang any individual even remotely suspected of partaking in piracy, forcing the nine Pirate Lords - including Barbossa and the re-resurrected Sparrow - to band together in armed opposition to Beckett's forces.
Like the previous two "Pirates" films, "At World's End" is immensely entertaining for the first forty-five minutes or so until the seemingly inevitable tedium begins to set in, caused in large part by the fact that we tend to get lost in the mind-boggling shuffling of characters and plot points. It gets so bad at times that we often aren't entirely sure who's aligned with whom, whose ship we're on, which characters are alive or dead at any given moment, and what "being dead" actually means in a scenario where the rules on that score seem as variable as a gentle sea breeze on a balmy summer afternoon. Moreover, any action film that runs an exhausting two hours and forty-eight minutes is bound to falter in its pacing and to sag in places, and "At World's End" is no exception in that respect. Doesn't anyone toiling in the blockbuster-producing factories of Hollywood know how to use an editing machine anymore?
Nevertheless, this latest episode does a nice job keeping all its main characters together in the same geographical locale for the most part, so that the actors don't get as lost on the vast narrative canvas as they did in the previous versions. As a result, even the usually bland Keira Knightely manages to step out of the shadows and deliver something of an actual performance in this film. The movie also gives an impressive amount of screen time to the marvelous Geoffrey Rush as the scalawag Barbossa. But the best news is that Johnny Depp returns to the glorious form he displayed in "Curse of the Black Pearl," which, for some reason, got a bit tamped down in the second installment The only real disappointment on the acting front is the much ballyhooed appearance of Keith Richards in the cameo role of Jack Sparrow's dad (Depp has confessed to modeling his original performance on Richards). Although the casting of Richards is rife with possibilities, for some reason the performer has chosen to underplay the part rather than to go wild with it. It would have been so much fun to see him hamming it up alongside Depp; instead, Richards drains the life out of the father/son encounter, utterly muffing this golden opportunity for a truly classic scene.
The special effects and makeup are typically spectacular, and the director keeps the action percolating along at a reasonably ramped-up pace, give or take the yawn-inducing longueur or two that occasionally come our way.
This particular pirate's tale has probably run its course at this point, but "At World's End" isn't a bad way for it to go out.