Today, we went to see the Fifth instalment in the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise. Depending on where you live, it’ll either be called Salazar’s Revenge or Dead Men Tell No Tales.
Now we have liked the previous sequels but in all honesty, never found any of them to quite bring back the magic of the first film, The Curse of the Black Pearl.
Well, this 5th film is probably our favourite sequel, but it sill just is not as good as the first one.
This film introduces us to Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites) son of Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) from the original trilogy.
We learn that Will has been cursed, but Henry has studied every myth, legend, tales and curses and believes that the mythical Trident of Poseidon can break the spell.
Whilst on a Navy ship, Henry still searching for the Trident, they come across the cursed area of the Devil’s triangle and a cursed pirate ship with a zombie-like crew and led by Captain Salazar (Javier Bardem)
This crew of the undead kill all on the Navy Ship, with the exception of Henry, after spotting him with a poster for a reward for the capture of Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) as we learn Salazar has a history with him.
In return for sparing his life, Salazar wants Henry to bring him Sparrow as well as the Trident, which he is hindered in finding, as the curse prevents him and his crew leaving the water.
We are then introduced to Jack, who is trying to rob a bank with some of our old favourites; Gibbs (Kevin McNally); Scrum (Stephen Graham) and Marty (Martin Klebba)
The bank raid turns to be a disaster, as rather than steal the Safe, they end up stealing the whole bank! Sparrow is eventually caught and about to be executed, along with Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario) who is a strong astronomer and due to this is believed to be a witch.
She and Jack are rescued by Jack’s crew when hired by Henry. They soon find that Carina’s knowledge and a journal left to her by her father can help them find them the trident and they race to get it before Salazar can get to it, as he intends to use it to end piracy for good and take his revenge on Jack!
Along the way, they will face zombie sharks; A returning face in Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) after he and his crew are caught by Salazar and we even come across Uncle Jack (Paul McCartney)
Yet again though, this is a film that does not give Sparrow the screen time it deserves, concentrating more on Carina and Henry; Barbossa is criminally underused, to the extent that his monkey is more memorable and Bardem just doesn’t do that much. Also, nearly all the funny lines have been revealed in all the trailers Worst still, the drunk Sparrow we know and got to love is almost a raging alcoholic in this one!
There are some great sequences in this film, the bank heist; the zombie sharks; a fun sequence of trying to bring back the Black Pearl from its bottle it’s now kept in and a great flashback to how Sparrow became a captain but there is just far too much going on, this could have been a great 90 minute film, instead it’s a drawn out, over 2 hours film and it’s a shame. Once again for summer blockbusters, characters are very flimsy and script replaced by big CGI sequences instead for our spectacle!
What we are left with is another watchable instalment of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, that is instantly forgettable but for fleeting moments of Depp showing us the reason we are so invested in the Jack Sparrow character.
You can find the trailer here:
You can order from Amazon here:
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