Johnny Depp's Unforgettable Performance Helps Make This Swashbuckling Adventure A Modern Classic

Rating: 9/10 (1 June 2017)

Today, few people can remember going into the local multiplex on a warm summer afternoon and being treated to something completely original. In the 1970s and 80s, pioneers like Spielberg and Lucas were creating modern myths, putting stories and images on screen that would be seared into the collective consciousness forever. Jaws, Star Wars, E.T, Indiana Jones, and even Jurassic Park, were more than just quality entertainment. There was a magic to those films that I thought had gone extinct by the time the 21st century rolled around. Then, in the summer of 2003, came Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl. Yes, it is inspired by the theme park attraction at Disneyland, but what director Gore Verbinski and his collaborators do, is use the spirit of the ride to create something truly special. With an ensemble cast featuring big stars, veteran character actors, and young up-and-comers, lavish production design, an iconic score, and a heaping spoonful of humor, Pirates of the Caribbean represents the perfect storm of summer entertainment. The Curse of the Black Pearl does not simply coast on a recognizable name. Instead, Verbinski and company dare to create something brand new. In the end, thanks in large part to Johnny Depp's audacious lead performance, Pirates of the Caribbean brings magic back to the movies.
The titular curse of the Black Pearl is the driving force behind the story of Pirates of the Caribbean. The Black Pearl's ruthless captain, Barbossa, played with scenery chewing gusto by Geoffrey Rush, and his crew are cursed by mythical Aztec Gold to live forever as the undead (In a bit of design brilliance, they're skeletal bodies can only be seen by the light of the moon). After Barbossa kidnaps the governor's daughter, Elizabeth Swan, played by the young beauty Keira Knightly, in order to break the curse, a young admirer of Elizabeth, a blacksmith named Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), enlists the help of legendary pirate, Captain Jack Sparrow, played by Johnny Depp in one of the most iconic performances of the decade, to help free her from the clutches of the undead crew. Now is as good a time as any to mention Johnny Depp. What he does with Jack Sparrow, with the makeup, the costume, and the unsteady, drunken, charismatic persona, is a tour de force of acting. Depp creates a pirate rockstar icon where just about everybody else would have phoned in a typical smiling Errol Flynn impression. He is simply electrifying on screen.
The story of Pirates of the Caribbean is appropriately old-fashioned. Writers Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio take care to include just about every pirate trope there is into the script. Sword fights, romance, sea-faring battles, and buried treasure, every classic pirate situation is here. While it might have been clichéd in less capable hands, the story here is deliciously simple. While there is a good deal of background to what the curse is and how it can be cured, the basic structure of Curse of the Black Pearl is in the spirit of the grand pirate adventures of the Golden Age of Hollywood. It is a classic adventure yarn with good guys, bad guys, sweeping romance, and high spirited adventure.
Depp gets the lion's share of the credit for the success of Pirates of the Caribbean, and he does steal the show, but Gore Verbinski's direction is nearly equal to the Johnny Depp show. The pairing of the high-energy director and the classic swashbuckling material proved to be a stroke of genius on the part of Jerry Bruckheimer. Verbinski brings enough personality and humor for a dozen movies. From a purely visual standpoint, Pirates of the Caribbean is equally unique. The exotic locations, from the Bay of Port Royal to the picturesque beauty of Rumrunner's Isle, are bright, colorful, and lush. Where the production value really excels though is in how the real-life locations sync perfectly with the sets, which tastefully evoke the Disneyland attraction. In it's production design, Curse of the Black Pearl is as satisfying a visual experience as you can have in a summer blockbuster. The locations, the sets, and the dependably boundary-pushing special effects from ILM make the most of all the natural beauty of the real life Caribbean, as well as the nostalgic Disney glow of the theme park ride.
In my eyes, Gore Verbinski is currently one of the best action directors working, but back in 2003, his brand of swashbuckling adventure was eye-opening. It's not just that Verbinski is so adept at giving the stunts, the highlights of which are a massive battle on the high seas and a climatic sword fight in a treasure-filled cave, an enthusiastic electricity. It's that the humor mixed throughout the action is so darn effortless. The action scenes in Pirates of the Caribbean are so fun by themselves, it seems the actors can't help but have fun along with them. The mix of humor and action in Pirates of the Caribbean is simply unrivaled. Nobody buckles swash quite as entertainingly as Gore Verbinski, and Curse of the Black Pearl represents him at the very top of his game.
This movie is fun. Not just the type of fun where you walk out of the theater feeling placated, but the type of experience that leaves you with a big dumb grin on your face the entire time. Without Gore Verbinski or Johnny Depp, Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl would probably be a solid adventure. It's with these two, plus the rest of the eclectic cast, that Pirates of the Caribbean becomes a bona-fide classic. Depp's Jack Sparrow is an unforgettable character, an instant icon that came out of nowhere. Nobody could have predicted what Depp brought to the character, and yet he fits into Verbinski's world like a glove. These elements are what make Pirates of the Caribbean special. Summer blockbusters come and go, but Bruckheimer, Verbinski, and Depp did something I thought could never be done again, they captured that old movie magic, like a ship in a bottle.
94/100