Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World’s End (10/10)
posted in Movie Reviews |
After the entertaining but lesser effort of Dead Man’s Chest, this third film goes for absolute broke, and is a resounding success. Full of deliriously bizarre concepts (some seemingly from the brain of the likes of David Lynch) and truly insane ambition. It’s a welcome change from the disappointing third franchise films of Spider-Man 3 and Shrek The Third. I’m already beginning to take quite a bit of heat for how much I liked this film, but that’s fine. I’m used to having to fight for certain movies. To be sure, I saw it a second time a couple days after the first screening and came to the conclusion that I may have even liked it a bit more the second time round.
Writing: Those who think the plotting and character interactions are too jumbled up and don’t work really aren’t paying attention close enough. And you really do need to pay attention to this one, because it moves along at such a clip, throwing out TONS of plot as it goes, it is tough to keep up if you’re not on the ball. In fact, after watching this film a second time, I’m starting to have a bit more appreciation for the second film. Certain things that seemed needless or convenient suddenly make sense in retrospect (primarily the stuff with Tia Dalma them bringing back Barbossa).
Production: Great Ceasar’s ghost! The visual effects teams must have numbered in the thousands to make a film of this ambition, and they must have slept at their workstations for most of the post-production phase. There’s SO many visual effects sequences in this movie that are absolutely gorgeous it’s hard to begin naming any. I will quickly single out some of the stranger and/or eerie sequences, like those of the crew sailing into Davey Jones’ locker, amidst eerie, frozen landscapes and water. Depp puts in a large number of performances in a few scenes, and again the VFX are great. Then there’s the battle material, which pulls out all the stops. There are sequences that made my jaw drop, both times I watched the movie. And all that is just singling out the VFX department. Everyone else comes through in spades as well, from the excellent sound design to the always-excellent set and costume departments.
Cast: What can you say about this cast at this point that hasn’t already been said? Johnny Depp comes through yet again with another wilder chapter of his portrayal of Captain Jack Sparrow - easily one of the most prolific of performances of the decade, period. In this film, he’s really lost his marbles, and Depp just goes for it - to remarkably fun effect. I can’t compliment Depp’s performance enough. The returning actor who elevates his performance considerably from previous films is Geoffrey Rush as Barbossa. Yeah, OK, he’s barely in the second one, so that doesn’t count. But he’s really on his game in this one, going as far over the top as the material would possibly allow, and it works oh so well. And when you get him and Depp together in a scene, it’s magic. Keira Knightley makes her tough role of Elizabeth Swan work yet again, taking it to a new level this time. Orlando Bloom makes his material work yet again, though his acting skill is still a bit restrained and obviously a bit below the brilliance sparking all around him on screen. Bill Nighy is stunning, yet again, as Davey Jones. He must go through murder in all that getup he has for the role, and he makes it all work. Jones has a much wider range of character and emotion in this film, and Nighy is absolutely up to the challenge. Chow Yun-Fat joins the team for this film and he does well enough keeping up with the insanity all around him. Tom Hollander takes a surprisingly striking turn as Lord Beckett, giving the fairly one-dimensional character remarkable charisma and depth. Jack Davenport continues to imbue (now-Admiral) Norrington with a number of levels. Kevin McNally is excellent yet again as Gibbs. The list goes on and on and on…
Music: Hans Zimmer’s wonderfully thematic, quirky and unrestrained music score is one of the highlights of the movie. Zimmer did some thematic work on the score to the first film, but gave main scoring credit to Klaus Badelt (who’s easily one of the least impressive of Zimmer’s stable of lackey composers). He took over as lead composer on teh second film and did a better job on the score than what the first film had (which wasn’t bad - just not great either). His Kraken theme from the second film is excellent, as are the other thematic elements surrounding the likes of Davey Jones. The score to this third film is instantly my favorite of the trilogy, featuring the brilliant new “Hoist The Colours” theme. Zimmer does an amazing job at weaving all sorts of different themes in and out of situations and character arcs. It’s one of the most thematic scores I’ve heard in years, which is getting to be a rarity these days.
Note that there’s a scene after the (incredibly immense) end credits, like the previous 2 films had.
