In five words: A tale not worth telling.

Rating: 5/10 (1 June 2017)

The fifth movie in the Pirates of The Caribbean franchise is promoted as the final chapter. It will be the last time we'll see Jack Sparrow sail the open seas on the Black Pearl and follow him on a crazy adventure, depending on the box office results off course. So did they close the franchise with a swansong or did they jump the shark. Well let's order some rum and "drink up me hearties yoho!" and dive into "Davy Jones' locker" to review this movie.
First some background about the franchise. Pirates of the Caribbean is a movie franchise that started strong with a movie that breathed new life into the pirate movie genre in 2003. A genre that died in 1996 with Cutthroat Island starring Geena Davis. The first movie "The Curse of The Black Pearl" is a good and entertaining movie with a strong story and well balanced action and humor. This is also the first time we see Johnny Depp play a drunk and brilliant pirate named Jack Sparrow.
Following the success of The Black Pearl, Disney decided to shoot the back-to-back resulting in mediocre action movies with a convoluted story. The fourth movie however completely jumped the shark by including an uninteresting villain and a story that made no sense; furthermore it primarily focused on Jack Sparrow. Don't take me wrong, Jack Sparrow is a brilliant and funny character; however the fourth installment showed us that he can't carry a movie. So how is the fifth and final movie?
Story: The fifth movie is about a boy named Henry Turner whom wants to find the trident of Poseidon in order to free his father from a curse. To achieve this he needs the help of Jack Sparrow and a horologist named Carina Smyth. During this endeavor they are followed by Captain Salazar an old enemy of Jack Sparrow's and he is seeking revenge. While this is the main outline there are also multiple other side stories and none of them are paid-off properly, resulting in some plot holes. Basically they tried to juggle too many story lines and in the end they ended up with nothing. A shame though because there is a specific side-story about the character Carina Smyth that had much potential and in my opinion should've been the main story.
Characters: There are too many characters in this movie and they all do not have enough screen time to fully develop. Together with an unfocused story it isn't always clear who the main character truly is:
Carina Smyth (played by: Kaya Scodelario), a girl who tried to follow in her father's footsteps as a scientist. She is headstrong, inventive and personally I think she should have been the main focus of the movie. Her story has so much potential. She is portrait reasonably by Kaya and I think she can do better, however the script is letting her down.
Henry Turner (played by: Brenton Thwaites), the son of the main character from the previous movies Will Turner (played by: Orlando Bloom aka Legolas). He is adventures, innocent and focused on freeing his father from the curse. He doesn't really do much in the movie. A forgettable character and the performance by Brenton was bland.
Jack Sparrow (played by: Johnny Depp), worst performance yet by Depp. The character was entertaining in the previous movies, partly because we see a new side of Jack Sparrow, in this we're just going through the motions. While it is interesting to see his younger self and his relation with Captain Salazar it is regrettable that we never truly see this character grow.
Hector Barbossa (played by: Geoffrey Rush), I've said it once and I'm saying it again he should've been the lead in the previous movie and especially this movie. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll keep it a bit cryptic. His part in this movie is a little short; however it has soooooo much potential. If only Geoffrey Rush had more lines and a better script this movie could've been great.
Cinematography: Nothing truly noteworthy. If you've seen the previous movies you'll know that the in camera shots on the sea are beautiful to look at. The CGI effects are a little dated but still good enough.
Three-Act-Structure: Beginning: The movie starts strong, mysterious followed by over the top action. However, after I don't know how long (felt like an hour), they were still introducing characters and unnecessarily fighting and it dragged.
Middle: Almost non-existent mostly action scenes and no character development. At least none that truly mattered.
End: Really, this movie has a dragged out beginning, and after that an anticlimactic ending. Because the movie doesn't give us any time to truly connect with the characters. They are mostly used to setup the next action scene or plot. And because of this we are not emotionally invested in their motivations and choices, resulting in a specific moment at the end of the movie that really wasn't earned.
Conclusion: A shame that is the only thing I can truly and honestly say about this movie. If they only had focused the story on the female lead Carina and invested time and money to rewrite the script they could've made one of the best pirates movie to end the franchise. As aforementioned, most of the stories aren't fleshed out properly and even though Salazar is portrait as the main villain he didn't leave an impression on me. It was mostly a copy paste work with interesting ideas and some with much potential.
So even though this movie isn't any good it is important to note that it didn't commit the unforgivable SIN a movie can ever commit and that is being boring. If you don't overthink it and just go with the flow, I think you'll have a good time.