Movie Review by Nigel A. Messenger
Starring: Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley
Director: Gore Verbinski
So the third but unlikely to be final PIRATES movie is here and finds all the regular cast back in their yo-ho-ho attire.
Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) is trapped in Davy Jones Locker and sees multiple versions of himself totally losing his sense of reality in a very cleverly filmed sequence where Jack Sparrow fills all of the roles after his noticeable absence from the first 20 minutes or so of the film.
Keira Knightley seems to guide the backbone of this edition of the franchise as her role is pivotal to almost the whole story. I’m not complaining as she manages to look very attractive as well as swinging from damsel in distress all the way to pirate queen!
If you thought the previous two PIRATE outings were big movies then this one is enormous and not just in running time. The action sequences and the sometimes quite complex story line must put PIRATES 3 into the ‘epic’ category.
In fact it’s quite amazing how they get away with explaining the more complicated parts of the story and still manage to hold the audience’s attention to the next big scene, a feat that many lesser films can never hope to achieve. Okay a few with a short attention span will occasionally fidget at the more wordy parts but as soon as you throw in some of Jack Sparrow’s antics as uniquely and cleverly portrayed by Johnny Depp, the film once again grabs you and you won’t for one minute complain about its close to 3 hours duration.
In fact my only slight gripe is that I would perhaps like to have seen a few more of Jack Sparrow’s clever quips and tricks, but then I would have also liked Chow Yun Fat’s role to have continued throughout, and I’d definitely like to have seen more of Keira Knightley – ok she was in most of the scenes – but I’d always like to see more of her!
As a final point if you’re planning to exit the theatre before the end credits are over – don’t! There is an extra scene at the very end of the credits – and a very important one too – as a reward for staying, so don’t miss it! Meanwhile I shall now wait in anticipation for the next instalment of what I suspect will be the continuing adventures of Captain Jack Sparrow (with Keira Knightley)!
