‘ PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES’
Disney presents a film directed by Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg and written by Jeff Nathanson. Rated PG- 13 ( for sequences of adventure violence, and some suggestive content). Running time: 129 minutes. Opens Friday at local theaters. Men Tell No Tales” might as well have been titled, “Go Big or Go Home.”
So here’s your plot, such as it is. Brenton Thwaites plays Henry Turner, the teenage son of Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann, the loving couple played by Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley in the first “Pirates” movie.
Henry is on a quest to break the curse that has doomed his father to a ghost ship at the bottom of the sea. He eventually teams up with Kaya Scodelario’s Carina, an astronomer often accused of witchcraft, and Captain Jack Sparrow himself. They each have their reasons to find the legendary Trident of Poseidon, which grants all power over the seas to anyone that possesses it. You know, that old story. The great Geoffrey Rush returns as the one- legged Captain Barbossa, who has alternately been Sparrow’s ally and his enemy over the decades. Barbossa has become a wealthy fat cat of the high seas, lording over a fleet of 10 pirate ships, but his world is turned upside down by Captain Armando Salazar ( Javier Bardem), an unhinged and quite undead pirate hunter who is about to kill Barbossa — until Barbossa offers up Jack Sparrow as a bounty.
Salazar wants to kill Jack because Jack’s the one who trapped Salazar in the Devil’s Triangle, which turned Salazar into a creepy undead creature with parts of his face missing and flowing hair that moves around as if he’s forever standing in front of a Beyonce concert wind machine, so there you have it.
All the talk of curses and revenge and magical maps is the movie equivalent of roadies stacking the amps for the pyrotechnics to follow. Depp’s Captain Jack has become pure comedic relief, to the point where even his heroics seem like accidental slapstick, so it’s up to the next- generation players — Thwaites’ Henry and Scodelario’s Carina — to assume the more traditional action movie lead roles, and the actors are up to the task.
Also, we have Oscar winners Rush and Bardem hamming it up beneath all the makeup and CGI trickery, and that’s a hoot. Bardem’s Salazar is a genuinely frightening creation.
Even the way Salazar says “Jack Sparrow,” making it sound something like “Yawk Where- Oh,” is fantastically weird. I’ll bet even the other undead pirates on Salazar’s ship spend their downtime talking about the captain’s spooky eccentricities.