Pirates Of The Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge

down by inconsistent scripting and the actors not showing half enough urgency about their situation most times. Nothing to do with the Joe Dante cult classics, but it’s quite certain you won’t have much of an appetite for midnight snacks after some of the gruesome demises on view here.

–DA

(★★✩✩✩)

THE opening action sequence showcases Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow and his trusty crew attempting to rob a vault by dragging the entire bank building that houses said vault through the town streets via horseback ala Fast Five, only to realise that all the vault’s content has spilled out due to Jack’s mishap. I felt the same way watching the film.

Lately, there seems to be a lot of money being poured into blockbusters with all flash and no soul – take Javier Bardem who plays the intimidating Captain Salazar. After playing Anton Chigurh in No Country For Old Men and Raoul Silva from Skyfall, bringing villains to life is almost second nature to this gentleman. He just has that quality. Pity it isn’t milked more here as the film opts to focus on the two new bland leads – a young sailor named Henry and a brilliant young woman named Carina – who coerce Jack into helping them find the mythical Trident of Poseidon before Salazar can get his hands on it.

Again, why is Hollywood hell-bent on making money on unmemorable fluff?

This movie isn’t terrible. It has spectacular moments here and there as per the usual Pirates films and Geoffrey Rush’s Barbossa gets a somewhat cool character arc. Only problem is, his story is mostly been-there, done-that, yawn-can-wemove-on because it is similar to a plot in Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2.

And what of Depp? He isn’t a cool, improvising rock star anymore. He’s now a bumbling idiot who makes Frank Drebin from the Naked Gun and Inspector Closeau from the Pink Panther films pale in comparison. Clearly, Jack Sparrow has had one bottle of rum too many. – Delton V. Cox