At World's End... What a Pleasant Surprise

ARRR MATEY! There be SPOILERS ahead!

Its amazing that I find myself liking the final installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise considering I personally despised the previous installment, Dead Man's Chest. Theoretically, 3 should also suffer the same issues as in the case of other franchises that had to split sequel scripts that were just too big in half (namely Matrix) but somehow it manages to come very close to the original despite some problems keeping it from reaching that level.

Now the good news is this film is basically the opposite of Dead Man's Chest. Where that film was all non-stop action sequence with very little plot, this film is all plot and thats great since I had absolutely no idea what was going on in the last flick. We pick up the story more or less where DMC left off. The British East India company led by the capitalist slimeball Cutler Becket (Tom Hollander, who is much better here than in DMC) is using its newly acquired control of Davey Jones (Bill Nighy) to launch an all out war on pirates and raiders alike. You see the Brits are basically blackmailing Jones into doing their bidding (which includes killing that stupid Kraken) by threating to blow his heart up with some well placed cannons. Yes the heart finally has a point folks, thats one of the many improvements in this film.

Meanwhile, in Singapore, our heroes Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightly) along with the newly reincarnated Hector Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush, hooray!) have arrived with a bunch of paid mercenaries to acquire a map to World's End from Pirate Lord Sao Feng (Chow Yun-Fat). World's End is the key on Earth to Davey Jones's Locker which our hero-of-sorts Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp, who doesn't show up until reel 3!) fell into after being munched on by the Kraken. Much of the plot of the first half of the film is concerned therefore with releasing Depp from his watery tomb and its easily the strongest part of the movie for me.

Once that is accomplished we're off to Shipwreck Cove so that the Pirate Lords can argue amongst themselves before setting out to defeat Cutler Becket and Jones once and for all. In between all of this, there are various double and triple crosses, escapes and close shaves, but thankfully none of them last long enough to feel really butt numbing as the ones in the last one did. However there are still problems, many of which are holdovers from Dead Man's Chest.

For one there's the Kalypso arc where we finally find out the true identity of Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris) from the last flick and her connection to Davey Jones. This starts out pretty good with a lot of pathos from Harris and a great scene where we finally see Nighy instead of that CGi thing but starts to feel kinda pointless by film's end. Humorously, I think the writers realized this while doing the film and added an extra line in about how that didn't serve any point. To confuse this further, there is a very strange sequence between Elizabeth and Sao Feng that makes you think Elizabeth is the real Kalypso. Only after watching the film through do you realize he's being metaphorical. The other problem I have is with Norrington (Jack Davenport) who is given the short shrift here after basically being the best actor in the last movie. His arc is way too short and its resolution is far too abrupt as if Elliot and Rossio just no idea what to do with him. You could also say the same about Governor Swann but his death was much better handled and shows what a monster Becket really is.

The last problem is again with the editing. This movie could have had a whole half hour cut out of it and that probably would have made it better than POTC1, which is still a bit of a minor masterpiece. Happily the editing problems don't actually occur until the film's third and final act whereas they were all over the place in DMC ("Yeah, ok guys, the water wheel looks nice but do we have to spend FIVE FUCKING MINUTES on it?").

Once last point to make before I wrap this up. This movie is funny! Almost as funny as Black Pearl, and much quicker than the forced humor of DMC. I think its the presence of Geoffrey Rush that helps the most since he has such great chemistry with Johnny Depp. Oh and the appearance of Kieth Richards as Daddy Sparrow is well worth the 6 bucks I payed to get in.

So overall At World's End is not a perfect film, but it is a much more satisfying experience than that piece of shit Dead Man's Chest. That movie left me leaving the theater angry, disappointed, and frustrated. This one left me with a smile on my face. Yo-ho, Yo-ho, a pirate's life for me.

VERDICT: *** 1/2 out of *****