MOVIE REVIEW
JAMES BURGESS is a 27-year-old performance, drama and theatre graduate.
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: SALAZAR’S REVENGE.
129 mins. Walt Disney Pictures. Showing at Cinemac on Wednesday, June 7 and Thursday, June 8. Rating: THE recent critical reception of the box-office swashbuckling Pirates franchise has, in the majority, gone somewhat from a miscreant’s trove of riches, to being run aground by rags.
After the powerhouse back-lot grandiosity and sharp script of director Gore Verbinski’s and writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio’s original trilogy (2003-2007), Rob Marshall’s (Chicago, Into The Woods, the upcoming Mary Poppins Returns), On Stranger Tides in 2011, The former Fallibroome High School pupil has attended the BAFTA Film Awards in London every year since 2009, meeting stars including Dame Helen Mirren, Christian Bale, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Emma Thompson. James lives on St Ives Close in Macclesfield. You can visit his website at www.jabfilmreviews. blogspot. com. felt enjoyable, albeit expositionally heavy, and the absence of the vital coupling of Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley was especially keenly felt. I wonder…
Here, with its absolutely terrific fifth instalment blasting surprises out of multiple canons, it’s put absolutely back on top of the parchment roster of one of the very best blockbuster franchises in mainstream, 21st-century cinema.
It simultaneously feels absolutely inimitably set within the Pirates atmosphere of studio-led scale, a glorious reprise of both high-spirited goldenage romanticism and humour; and the main themes of Hans Zimmer’s unmistakably rousing orchestral score, the very slickest of visual effects, and the threatening, plotting chimera of danger around every doomy, crescendoed turn.
At the same time it feels utterly new, thanks to the injection of brilliant new talent inhabiting brand new characters. Brenton Thwaites is just as fresh-faced and resourceful as both Bloom and Knightley were, starring as Henry Turner, son to their characters; Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann. Kaya Scodelario is also equally impressive as astrologer Karina, allowing for a particularly inventive sub-plot involving blood-moons and star trajectories.
Of course, tottering fantastically up front and centre, is Johnny Depp’s infamous Captain Jack Sparrow, whose facial expressions, agitprop physicality and slurred delivery are as joyous as ever. It’s also a series thriving on the surprise of its villainy and set-pieces, possibly never more so than here, as Javier Bardem (Skyfall) continues his litany of gleeful malevolence as Salazar, who in his ghostly, genuinely unnerving, deliciously unpredictable wake (similarly to Ralph Fiennes’s Voldemort), leaves lots of options for both peerless cinematography, and 3D to complement each other with aplomb.
Sea-birds squawk and swoop into camera, sharks circle and jump in speed-ramped editing, armies of undead charge on-mass, and waterfall tombs nearly leave you drenched!
To reveal more of the many twists would spoil it. Stay after the credits!