Re:tro Re:view - Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales!

I skipped this one at the theaters, I meant to see it, but bad reviews and Johnny Depp’s eccentric performances turned me away.  This shouldn’t have stopped me.  What I was interested in teased in the trailer is that it featured Brenton Thwaites.  He was in Gods of Egypt (2016) which was another entertaining movie that was fun.  Also, Thwaites is currently Robin in the Titans series.  So, the question is Johnny Depp, does he turn in an odd performance that veers off the movie?  Answer, no.  Jack Sparrow is again eccentric, but here he plays second fiddle to Thwaites’ Henry Turner, who plays third fiddle to Kaya Scoderlario’s Carina Smyth. She was in the latest Maze Runner: The Death Cure (2018) film.  It is really a female lead for this movie.  The others are just along for the adventure.  

One last point, is that I found story problems with all of the Pirates films, but this one with a screenplay by Jeff Nathanson does the tricky job of continuing the franchise, resetting all of the characters to underdog status, bringing back favorite characters from the earlier films, and moving the story along.  I won’t forget that the film is directed by the duo of Joachim Ronning and Epsen Sandberg who directed Kon-Tiki (2012) and also the western Bandidas (2006) which has more in line with this film.  Let’s get to it, I like the opening with the pirate flag and the dark castle under a stormy sky.  We get a young boy collecting maps and pictures of “Father’s Curse” and Jack Sparrow.  There is a nice closeup of the mirror of a lighthouse while the boy (Lewis McGowan) rows a boat and then throws a bag of stones to drop himself down!  He reaches the seafloor and the cursed Flying Dutchman carries him to the surface.  

The boy emerges from the water to hear footsteps, it is Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), and he sends his son, Henry, home to his mother.  Henry says there’s a treasure, the Trident of Poseidon, that can break his curse.  He says that Jack Sparrow can help him.  The Dutchman starts to submerge, Will gives his son his necklace, and Henry reaches the boat.  We get nine years later, a ship is pursued by another, out of a porthole, is the adult Henry (Thwaites).  Henry is an interesting connection to characters from the previous movies, but of course takes on the action and has his own quest.  He rushes to warn Captain Toms (Richard Piper) that he is headed to the Devil’s Triangle.  In the foggy seas, they see a ruined ship and out of it come sailors running on the sea.  They slaughter the crew and then their captain arrives with flowing hair as if underwater (nice effect!).  

This is Captain Salazar (Javier Bardem) who is looking for Jack Sparrow and gives Henry a message that he will see daylight and kill Jack.  He says he can’t deliver the message because “dead men tell no tales.”  A ruthless, relentless villain, Bardem has fun with the role.  We shift to a prison where a sentence is given to Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario), accused of being a witch, she says she’s a scientist, and has only a diary from an unknown father.  Carina is a welcome addition to the Pirates films, taking on the action, and more clever than all of the characters.  She has been picking the cell’s lock and slams the priest down to escape.  Outside is the dedication to the Royal Bank of Saint Martin.  Genre actor Bruce Spence plays the official, Mayor Dix, who boasts about the new vault.  It is revealed while Carina is chased by soldiers.  

Her escape is reported to the commanding officer, Lt. Scarfield played by David Wenham.  The vault is opened and a snoring, drunk Jack Sparrow is inside.  He wakes to see the town while ropes to the vault are tied by Jack’s crew, led by Gibbs (Kevin McNally) who is now in The Outpost series.  The soldiers are about to shoot him with rifles when a woman, Frances (Zoe Ventoura) wakes up in the vault, the mayor’s wife!  Gibbs readies a train of horses to get the Fast and Furious bank robbery ready.  The soldiers fire, Jack ducks, and the horse team pull the vault from the bank’s wall.  The horses keep charging forward, pulling the bank, the roof and walls, forward!  A rope from the bank drags Jack along with the massive structure through the town.  The open vault begins spilling coins.  

Carina enters an observatory and checks a telescope.  The startled astronomer says, “No woman has ever handled my Hershel”, love the dialogue!  Carina takes a chronometer, Jack stumbles in, and the bank rips into the astronomer’s building.  Jack throws Carina into a hay wagon that takes off.  He runs on the rooftops and leaps onto the bank’s roof.  Gibbs warns about the bridge, Jack jumps on it as the bank shatters it, and then leaps onto the vault.  Jack’s crew revolts against Jack and he shows them his ship, the Black Pearl in a bottle, they say that Barbossa has ten ships and rules the seas.  The Pearl was magically shrunk to bottle size by Blackbeard in the last movie.  Gibbs and the rest of the crew leave Jack.  They have a ship, the Dying Gull, on shore.  Henry wakes to find Scarfield who says he survived on driftwood, but the captain has ripped his sleeves so he is a traitor and sentenced to death.  

Henry is treated by Carina in disguise.  She needs his help to leave the island to read the Map No Man Can Read left by Poseidon.  She shows him the diary of Galileo and Henry realizes the map is in the stars.  She gives Henry a lock pick and tries to run, but is captured by soldiers.  Henry has disappeared.  Jack is drunk in town, falls in the mud, and tries to buy a drink.  Captain Salazar has arrived and since Jack gave away the compass, they can pursue him in the daylight.  Henry sees Jack taken away by soldiers.  In prison, Carina sees the blood moon that makes a ruby on Galileo’s diary glow, she uses it to reveal words, “To release the power of the sea, all must divide.”  She knows that the trident is at an island.  At Jack’s cell, he is met by Henry who introduces himself as the son of Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann.  Jack doesn’t like them.  

Henry talks about the Trident, but this puts Jack to sleep.  He also delivers the message from Salazar, but Jack thinks he is dead.  Henry says an “army of the dead” are looking for Jack and his only hope is the trident.  Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) is enjoying the fine life of plunder with musicians playing while he is given a message that his ships are being attacked.  Barbossa knows it is Salazar.  Barbossa gives a bag of coins to talk to a witch.  The witch, Shansa (Golshifteh Farahani), bald and freaky looking, is asked about the dead.  She says it is Jack “sailing for the Trident with a girl and a pearl.”  Shansa says the dead can’t step on dry land.  She has Jack’s compass and gives it to Barbossa.  The escape from the executions is as fun and silly as the previous chase.  

Thwaites has one of the best lines in the movie when Carina takes off her dress to swim in her undergarments to an island and says to Jack, “I saw her ankles.”  The rapport between Henry and Carina is great, there was a prequel novel on Carina, The Brightest Star in the North (2017) by Meredith Rusu. The challenge of introducing new leads is that they have to bring something fresh to the franchise and be just as winning as the originals, Will and Elizabeth.  This was the problem with the fourth film, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011), they seem tacked on to the Pirates story.  Jack is able to captain his first ship, the Wicked Wench, the ship that is in the Pirates attraction.  The quest for Poseidon’s Trident and how it works all makes sense within the movie.  I would really like to see another Pirates movie if it continues this way, but it is also a good wrap up to the series if this is the end.  

Four Tridents of Poseidon out of Five! 

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