DEAD IN THE WATER
Yes, Jack Sparrow’s back but there are few laughs and not even a Paul McCartney cameo can save the day. Five films in, surely the Pirates franchise is...
When we first saw it, Johnny Depp’s swaggering, staggering, kohl-eyed turn as Captain Jack Sparrow was a breath of fresh cinematic air. It was cool, it was funny, it was surprising: this was definitely not a side of Depp we had seen before and the Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise was all the better for it.
Depp was so good, in fact, that the man who had inspired the twitchy performance – Rolling Stones guitarist and lifelong pleasure-seeker Keith Richards – actually graced the third film with a cameo appearance. Compliments don’t come much cooler or more gracious than that.
But it’s 14 years now since Captain Sparrow first narrowed his eyes and lurched into view and a lot of Caribbean water has flowed under the bows of the Black Pearl since then. As the fifth film, Salazar’s Revenge, arrives in our cinemas – a mere six years after the fourth – Depp’s by-now wearyingly familiar performance is no longer surprising or particularly funny, so much so that there are moments, particularly in the first half, when the film becomes significantly less amusing every time he hoves into view.
As for cool… when you find yourself being upstaged by Paul McCartney – contributing a brief cameo as Sparrow’s inevitably Liverpudlian pirate uncle – it’s definitely time to hang up the old tricorn hat. McCartney even gets to deliver the film’s best line, as Sparrow is once again dragged off for an execution we all know he will somehow avoid.
‘If they disembowel you, Jack, ask for Victor,’ advises the former Beatle, ‘he’s got the softest hands.’ It’s not quite the only laugh in a film that runs to more than two hours but there aren’t many. Despite its very obvious attempts at renewal – with not one but two familiar faces returning to the piratical fray – this feels like a franchise that has either run its course or is flogging a dead pirate.
For there’s no shortage of those in this latest instalment. Dead pirate number one is Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), now condemned to ‘sail’ under the seas as a barnacle-encrusted corpse on The Flying Dutchman. His loving and very much alive son, Henry, drops in for a chat every now and again using the old sponge-diver’s trick of tying yourself to a heavy stone. He’s convinced that by studying the strange myths and tales of the sea, he will find a way to bring his old dad back to life but the situation seems hopeless. Only the Trident of Poseidon could do that and, as everybody knows, that can never be found.
And yet nine years later – with Henry by now all handsome and grown-up and played by former Home And Away star Brenton Thwaites – that’s what the late Captain Salazar (Javier Bardem) and his long-dead crew are also pinning their hopes on. Although, that said, they definitely wouldn’t mind getting their hands on the man who lured them into the Devil’s
When you find yourself upstaged by a Beatle it’s definitely time to hang up the old tricorn hat
Triangle in the first place. What was his name again? Jack someone?
Yes, once again, there’s no escaping Sparrow who, contrary to high-seas rumour, is very much alive and unwell in the Caribbean. When he’s not falling over drunk into pigsties, his bungling crew are dragging entire bank buildings (they were actually only after the safe) through the streets of St Martin. But, along the escapade-packed way, he has somehow fallen in with the beautiful Carina Smyth (former Skins star Kaya Scodelario), who locals think is a witch but is actually an astronomer and horologist. Cue the inevitable joke, duly flogged to death. More importantly, she might just be able to find the Poseidon Trident.
This is a film that never hits its thigh-booted stride. Yes, Thwaites and particularly Scodelario are fresh-faced breaths of creative air but Bardem and his rotting gang are hampered by being very obviously the creation of visual effects, while writing in Geoffrey Rush, who returns as Captain Barbossa, almost seems more trouble than it’s worth.
But it’s Depp who is principally to blame. He used to provide the magic; now he’s like a heavy anchor that has to be dragged from scene to scene. Well, I’m sorry, Johnny, but it’s time to cut the chain and put the franchise out of its misery.