In the oily sea, the killing ground

Rating: 7/10 (10 July 2006)

When I left the theater after having seen the first Pirates sequel, I overheard two guys behind me talking about the movie, one of whom importantly summed up the movie with the words, "It was like, all action no story." I didn't look, but I'm sure he puffed out his chest as he said it, too. While I'm sure that I am guilty of something like it from time to time, there is nothing that irritates me more than people who walk into a movie like this, sum it up with some clichÃ©, and then fold their arms triumphantly, sure that they are superior to everyone involved in making the movie. What a tool.
On the other hand, my reaction may have something to do with the fact that the story in this movie is so huge that I think I would have to watch it at least three or four times before I really caught everything that was going on. The plot is hardly Shakespearean in its intricacy, but for a summer popcorn blockbuster it's pretty intense.
The movie has its strengths and weaknesses, but for sheer entertainment it resides comfortably near the top of the list of the current releases. Granted, it's too long by about 45 minutes, Keira Knightly has not done much to shake that pompous Britishness that made her role in the first movie (and this one) goofy almost to the point of being intolerable, the great Johnny Depp comes dangerously close to overacting once or twice, Orlando Bloom rarely stops overacting from beginning to end, and the action sequences are so long and so CGI and cut together so dizzyingly fast that there will be times when you will want to close your eyes, not to mention that some of the action setups are just ridiculous. Captain Jack's rotisserie situation, for example, shocked me because I didn't think I would see something this soon which would outdo the stampede sequence in King Kong for absurdity.
However, the CGI effects are certainly impressive, Davy Jones is a phenomenal villain (the effects that created him and that make up his facial expressions remind me of how impressed I was with Gollum in Lord of the Rings), and like I said, I was highly impressed with the depth of the story. I think the movie definitely suffered from an obviously exploded budget, there are times when it seems that they didn't know when to stop spending money on the movie, but for the most part I think they were able to keep it in check (the swordfight on top of the rolling water-wheel, however, is not an example of keeping limitless spending in check).
I didn't love the movie as much as I had heard I would, I liked Captain Jack Sparrow a lot better in the original film, and by the time this one was finally over I was numb from the waist down (and around the eye-sockets, somewhat), but there is a hell of a lot of movie here, and the closing scene will have you jumping out of your seat for part 3