Johnny Depp is back for the second installment of the "Pirates" franchise as Capt. Jack Sparrow, with his dreads, even more eye shadow and fingers that are just as fluttery as ever. This time round he is not after a ship, but rather his very soul. Now captain of the Black Pearl for thirteen years as per the agreement he made with Davy Jones (well, technically two years as Jack puts it), the time has come to give his eternal soul to the mythical pirate of the Flying Dutchman and work as his crew. Jack uses his bargaining prowess and offers Jones 100 souls in exchange for his own, but this is simply a ploy to buy time for Jack to find what he actually wants most...
Also back are lovers Will Turner and Elizabeth Swan (Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly), both just as useless as they were in the first film. Both have been arrested for helping Jack to escape the hangman, but fate intervenes when Lord Beckett (Tom Hollander), replacement of Commodore Norrington and twice as tight and unpleasant, offers Elizabeth Letters of Marque in exchange for a very precious compass belonging to Jack. Both Will and Norrington find reasons to claim the chest of Davy Jones which is in the end what Beckett wants as well, all of which creates a rather confusing, cacophonous story filled with even more deception and pointless sword fights.
Lost is the charm and the magic of the first film, as is the excitement and surprise of Depp. His performance even falters at times letting us glimpse the handsome leading man instead of--as one critic put it--the "drunken drag queen". Probably never in the history of cinema had such a perplexing and individual character been created as Jack Sparrow which made the first film so enchanting, but this time he seems to flounce about with out any real purpose, poorly disguising his tricks to conclude a story that was never properly set up to begin with.
I found myself instead drawn more towards Norrington. As stuffy and monotonous as he was in the first film he emerges as the most human of all of the characters, broken and beaten after making a very bad mistake while on the hunt for the Black Pearl. Stripped of his position and his honor he descended into a drunken state of misery, finally turning to Jack for help to regain his standing in society. There was genuine pathos in his work that was missing for all other characters, particularly Will and his father, Bootstrap Bill, who seemed to make rash decisions for no apparent reason.
What drives this film along and makes the two and half hours almost worthwhile is the fast pace and outstanding FX. They transform what should be a small, fun, swashbuckling adventure into a massive epic on the high seas. Particularly great is the work done on the crew of the Flying Dutchman. Bill Nighy, who is always a good choice as the villain, plays Jones. All crew sailing under him have 100 years in his service to postpone death, but their afterlife becomes a hell as they transform into hideous creatures of the deep. Jones himself has the head of an octopus with a bulbous protrusion emerging from beneath his hat and a beard of slimy green tentacles. The close ups of him are extraordinary as you can still see Nighy beneath the computer work, and as he hisses and froths his lines he actually becomes quite frightening.
The action is nonstop which is what its audience probably wants, but the pirate cliches are endless as well and not nearly as clever as the first film. A lot of the jokes are running ones from "The Curse of the Black Pearl", but the lack of newness is tiresome. There are several new, interesting characters, but if they felt the need to add those in them some other boring ones ought to have gotten the ax. Lose Will, Elizabeth, Becket and the useless East India Co. plot and about 40 minutes from the running and you would have a decent film.
2/4
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