By Brett Blake Any time we arrive at the fifth film in a franchise, it’s worth considering the potential options the filmmakers had before them. Do they reboot, and take everything back to basics? Do they change things up, and deliver a new take with a new vision? Or do they just give us more of the same? PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES is absolutely more of the same, for better or worse, though objectively it’s the most competently-constructed of the series since DEAD MAN’S CHEST. It offers up a production of giant proportions (all of the money is up on the screen, as they say) and no small amount of energetic fun. It won’t win over any new fans to the franchise, but those who’ve stuck with it up to this point will likely find themselves having a good time with it. The story concerns Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites), a young man who seeks to release his father, William Turner (Orlando Bloom), from a curse which traps him as the undead captain of the dreaded Flying Dutchman for eternity. Henry’s plan revolves around a search for the mythical Trident of Poseidon, which is said to be able to break any curse. Also searching for the Trident is a ship of ghostly pirate slayers led by Captain Salazar (Javier Bardem), who also has a personal vendetta against the one man Henry needs to help him find the Trident... Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp). Along with an intrepid young astronomer named Carina (Kaya Scodelario), Henry and Jack race to beat Salazar - and Jack’s sometimes foe, sometimes ally Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) - to the Trident. If that sounds in any way convoluted, that’s because it is. The story is unapologetically convoluted, with key beats hinging on which character has Jack’s magical compass at what time, or which set of characters on which ship are headed to which locale and when. The movie, rather cheerfully, doesn’t dwell on the logistics of how its plot works, and that’s probably for the best, considering that the least-good movie in this series, AT WORLD’S END, became almost incomprehensible for some due to its labyrinthine plotting. DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES makes enough sense as you’re watching it that the plot holes don’t leap out immediately. Over the course of the complex shenanigans, though, there’s an undeniable sense of nautical adventure and mischief that is quite appealing. The action sequences, though often more on the funny and silly side, have an energy and an inventiveness that does remind of the franchise’s heyday with THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL and DEAD MAN’S CHEST. The first big setpiece, involving the attempted robbery of a bank vault, is impressively preposterous, as is a delightfully goofy sequence where Jack and Henry are attacked by rotting zombie sharks. Aiding the action is very solid cinematography; a dodgy digital shot here and there aside, the visuals are splashy and colorful, and even downright beautiful at times. There’s a sequence set on a hidden island of volcanic rock which is embedded with thousands of sparkling jewels, gems, and diamonds that is one of the more striking photographic moments in the series. Javier Bardem, despite wearing a layer of makeup and CGI enhancements, commits to the role of Salazar. Save for a small handful of moments, he plays the role straight, and deftly projects the seething, nearly righteous anger and subtly wounded pride of this man who blames Jack Sparrow (correctly) for the predicament of himself and his crew. Geoffrey Rush is once again a pleasure as Barbossa, Jack Sparrow’s frequent piratical adversary, though Rush finds himself saddled with an emotional subplot that feels out of place. He does his very best to sell it, and almost manages to make it work, but it feels both unearned and totally out of character based on everything we’ve ever seen from Barbossa in the previous movies. Though Barbossa is very entertaining, he’s narratively misused here. Brenton Thwaites proves to be a fine successor to Orlando Bloom... in the sense that he competently plays the straight man to the more colorful and interesting characters in the story. There’s an earnest quality about Thwaites that is nice, but his Henry is easily the least compelling major player in this tale. He’s upstaged by Kaya Scodelario, who takes the cliched “fiery and smart young woman in a man’s world” and does a lot with it; she projects a keen wit and in-your-face independence which makes her a quite engaging presence. She’s also tasked with handling much of the gobbledygooky exposition (and there’s a lot of it), and she does so in ways that feel fairly natural. Being entirely unfamiliar with her before this film, Scodelario seems like a real find. Then, of course, we have the legend that is Captain Jack Sparrow, and there’s something weird going on with Johnny Depp this time around. I mean, granted, his Jack Sparrow has always been weird, but the issue in this film is that Sparrow has essentially become a parody of himself. To be fair, the movie does attempt to give a story justification for this (Jack is down on his luck and has hit the bottle even harder than usual), but if you go back and watch the first PIRATES movie, you will find that Sparrow is not merely a funny, buffoonish character; he’s got a sharp mind, and his antics more often feel like a put-on persona than anything else. The next three films slowly stepped away from that and embraced the drunken goofiness more and more, until we finally arrive at DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES, where we’re presented with the most broad version of Jack Sparrow we’ve seen so far. But here’s the rub... I still found that enjoyable. That’s the truly weird part of this. Perhaps against my better judgment, I found myself willing to be pulled along by the mugging and silliness of what Sparrow’s up to. Objectively, I think the characterization and usage of Sparrow in the screenplay is problematic on narrative and continuity levels, and the degree to which you’re still able to enjoy what Depp’s doing will likely determine how successful you think the overall movie is. I was entertained by him. That’s sort of the movie in a nutshell. At the end of the day, if you’ve (more or less) liked the previous movies, you will find things to like in here. If you haven’t, you probably won’t. Despite having problems with the shameless mumbo jumbo of the plot and the inconsistent characterizations, enough buckles were swashed for me to enjoy my time with DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES.
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