PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN
AT WORLD'S END

"Yo-ho-ho-ho"

With East India Company declaring war on any pirate that sails the seven seas and Lord Cutler Beckett (Hollander) controlling Davey Jones (Nighy) and the Flying Dutchman, Will Turner (Bloom), Elizabeth Swan (Knightley) and Captain Barbossa (Rush) have to come up with a plan if they are going to survive. Bringing together the Pirate Lords is the answer but every one of them has to be there and that means they will have to rescue someone from Davey Jones's Locker, Captain Jack Sparrow (Depp).

After finding the 'Dead Man's Chest', the Pirates take us to 'World's End' but the question will be asking yourself is 'will it ever end?'

At two hours and forty-eight minutes, the third movie in the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' franchise is a very, very long movie. While this isn't always a bad thing, just watch the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy, the problem with this pirate movie is that after the box office bonanza of the first and second films, Gore Verbinski and Jerry Bruckheimer have got rapped up in their own success and let writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio become over indulgent.

The second film ended with far too many open plotlines but the good news is for fans that most of them get resolved, even though you might to be too happy with these resolutions. With the production of the third movie starting before the writers had even finished the script the first hour or so of the film is spent trying to set up the agendas of the characters, as they try and get their own resolutions to their stories in the finale. We have Will Turner's desire to free this father from Davey Jones, Lord Beckett's commitment to bringing the pirate era to an end, Davey Jones's longing to free himself from his curse, Barbossa's wish to release the power of the sea goddess Calisto on the East India Corporation fleet and Captain Jack Sparrow's overwhelming dream to become immortal. All of these agendas mean that the story jumps all over the place and takes an age to get going, as most of the film is spent at sea with the characters travelling the oceans of the world, trying to achieve their goals. This fact means that most of the movie feels like you have hit a dead clam, where nothing much can happen until all of these plot point have been set up and explained, keeping the action in an almost three hour movie to a minimum.

When the movie finally gets going, there is much pirate fun to be had. This is all down to Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow returning to action when Will, Elizabeth and Barbossa finally discover how to rescue him from Davey Jones's Locker. Depp clearly revels in this role as it gives him chance to be completely over the top and endearing at the same time. Jack Sparrow could do anything on screen and you would be mesmerised by his performance. This time he takes Jack to an even crazy level, as the effects of been alone in the Locker has clearly taken a mental tone and given him a new goal in life, to never die again. The rest of the cast a little bit of a mixed bag however. The jury is still out on Orlando Bloom as to whether he can actually act and Keira Knightley does nothing but pout and ham up her English accent. As Will and Elizabeth, the pair get to advance their relationship but Will's desire to rescue his father, Bootstrap Bill Turner (Stellan Skarsgård) from the tentacles of Davey Jones could get in the way of their happiness. After missing almost the entire second movie, Geoffrey Rush returns to have some real fun as Captain Barbossa, Bill Nighy gets to show a deeper side to Davey Jones and Tom Hollander continues to play the villain of the piece as Lord Beckett. The rest of crew of the Black Pearl return but don't have as much to do as you wish they would and there are even smaller returns for Jack Davenport as Norrington and Jonathan Pryce as Governor Swan. The newcomers don't get enough screen time either, with Chow Yun-Fat being criminally underused.

Where the film excels is in the visual effects and the look of the movie. No expense has been spared on making the world that Captain Jack Sparrow and the rest of the Pirates of the Caribbean inhabit a visual spectacle. Creating Singapore, the Islands of the Caribbean, the frozen wastes and Davey Jones's Locker, Gore Verbinski's FX team have pushed the creative boundaries again. Davey Jones himself continues to be one of the most amazing computer generated characters and the finale to the movie is just a special effects spectacular that will have you enthralled.

'Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End' is a real disappointment. After the success of the film movie, director Gore Verbinski, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio made the second and the third movie far too big and ambitious to work. Instead of one five hour plus story, they should have produced two standalone tales instead of getting delusions of grandeur to tell a story that is far too long and, definitely in the third movie, not as adventurous it could have been. The Yo-ho-ho-ho has disappeared from this pirate's adventure.

Not Available

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

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2007