The end of the Black Pearl? The end of Jack Sparrow?

Rating: 6/10 (14 December 2014)

"Dead Man's Chest" is the second installment from the "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise, directed just like 1 and 3 by Gore Verbinski and Elliott and Rosso are back as writers too. I felt that, in this movie, Jack Sparrow's character was not the one at the center, but Orlando Bloom's was. Which hurt the movie a lot as Bloom still needs to convince me as a dramatic actor and he did not even pull off the hero part here in a way that I liked it. But don't worry. Knightley is a lot in it as well, mostly as a female pirate this time and Johnny Depp gets lots of screen time again as well and was maybe the best thing about the film. Sparrow and Swann get even more sexual tension than in the first movie where there was only the island scene. Here at some point you could maybe even wonder for a moment if they become a couple. The film has a father-son storyline (Skarsgård, Bloom) and the main antagonist, the scary octopus pirate Davy Jones, is played by Bill Nighy. He was really good, though not as good as Rush in the first movie. But at the end it is revealed that Rush and Nighy will be in part 3, which makes me really curious.
Apart from that, the story was slightly weaker than in the first movie, the visual side was equally strong and even won an Academy Award this time, maybe mostly thanks to the spectacular final kraken fight scene. How did one single shot from Sparrow's gun manage to chase the kraken away though for a moment? The black-spots-on-the-hand plot did not really do much for me, so I could have done without it unless it is really elaborated on in the next film. The topic is a very traditional one in terms of pirate stories: the hunt for a key and a treasure chest. Some animals are included: a parrot, a small monkey and also a dog very brief. All in all, it is a family movie, maybe not for the very small ones, but the few violent scenes are not particularly graphic or are over very quickly. The commodore, or I should say ex-commodore, played by Jack Davenport is back too, but I have to say, unlike the first film, he did not do really much for me in this one. There's some human enemies trying to hang the protagonists (for helping Jack Sparrow) escape at the start of the film, but in terms of enemies, it is really all about Davy Jones here. Great character and I loved his immediate reaction to when he sees the chest is empty.
Sparrow himself was a bit of an anti-hero again. His return to the ship is displayed as heroic. But he gets punished hard for it. However, there was a reference early on how he kept calling himself Captain even when he had no ship, so he was probably obliged to return as a real captain would and his honor told him to. As a whole, this is a decent film, slightly worse than the original maybe, but not by much. Here and there, they could have cut a scene and kept it closer to 2 hours without hurting the overall outcome, but even this way I still recommend it.