My favourite of the series

Rating: 7/10 (20 April 2009)

Unlike most people who think Curse of the Black Pearl was the best of the Pirates' series, I personally prefer Dead Man's Chest.
Dead Man's Chest starts with Will (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth (Keira Knightley) getting arrested by the evil Lord Becket (Tom Hollander) for helping Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) escape. Becket makes a deal, if Will finds Jack then he would pardon them and more importantly, Jack's compass. Jack is on his own mission when Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) wants to recall Jack's debt for raising the Black Pearl. Here Jack has to run to land before having to play everyone involved against for him to get his own way and save his skin. A sub-plot of the film is Will finding that his father (Stellan Skarsgård) is alive, working for Davy Jones. Bootstrap Bill sets out to do all he can to protect his son.
I will get the problems out the way first. The plot is too convoluted and mixed up. It can lead to confusion and loosing interest. The convoluted plot also leads to the film being too long and a number of faux endings. Finally Orlando Bloom can't act (except in Lord of the Rings). Now to the positives. The action is excellent and you get a lot of sword fights and flint-lock gun fights. An excellent mix of action and comedy is the free way sword fight on the bench. There is comedy which people should enjoy. Johnny Depp is very good in the film, but Bill Nighy does steal the show. Nighy is alway excellent, being the best performer in Love Actually and very good in Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Guest House Paradiso etc... Nighy made a brilliant villain. The special effects are amazing, some of best put to film and I expect most of the people involved will not struggle to find work. Another element I enjoyed was the sexual tension between Jack and Elizabeth throughout the film and how she uses it as a weapon against him. I would have like to see more of that.
It's an enjoyable enough film.