Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (Cert. 12A, 168 min) Starring: Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Geoffrey Rush, Chow Yun-Fat Director: Gore Verbinski
IN THE same week that the Cutty Sark went up in flames, we now bear witness to another maritime disaster.
Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World’s End is not a complete shipwreck but it sails perilously close, capsizing in the first hour under the weight of audience expectation.
Rumbustious action set-pieces, augmented with spectacular computer-generated effects, bookend this third instalment of the series, and cute comic interludes buoy the downbeat mood.
However, there’s no mistaking warning flares sent up by Johnny Depp, who looks interminably bored with his character, salty seadog Jack Sparrow.
He barely musters the energy to deliver a performance. If you haven’t seen the first two films, there’s very little point seeing At World’s End.
Screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio presume audiences are savvy with the characters and their fates, chugging full steam ahead with the quest to rescue Jack from Davy Jones’s locker.
Falling foul of a pact forged with the multi-tentacled Davy Jones (Bill Nighy), Jack finds himself consigned to purgatory.
Thankfully, lovebirds Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley, left) have joined forces with Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) to rescue Jack from walking the plank to eternal damnation.
They head to Singapore to meet with Chinese pirate Sao Feng (Chow Yun-Fat), in the hope of creating an alliance against the despicable East India Trading Company, which now controls Davy and his vessel, The Flying Dutchman.
The overblown action sequences are thrilling as expected, and Jack’s hare-brained scheme to escape The Land Of The Dead definitely shivers the timbers, as does Keith Richards’s delicious appearance as Sparrow Snr, strumming a guitar and dispensing cryptic advice to his wastrel son.
