Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Directed by Gore Verbinski

Written by Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio

Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer

Original Music by Klaus Badelt

Cinematography by Dariusz Wolski

Starring Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley

Rated PG-13 for action/adventure violence.

Runtime: 140 minutes

Playing at the Circus Twin theatre

When was the last time you heard a really good, “Yar, Yar?”  If it’s been too long, don’t miss this movie because you’ll hear the best “Yar, Yar”s since Captain Hook and double your “Davy Jones’ Lockers” to boot.  An extremely entertaining movie, if about 40 minutes too long, “Pirates” was probably just as much fun for the cast to make as it is for the audience to watch.  The ending is about 90% predictable, but it’s really all about the sword fights, which are also about 90% predictable.  Maybe that’s the point of the whole movie.  To take “B” rated movies about violent, misshapen psychos and cast them in the context of, say, golfing.

Take the star, Jack Sparrow, for example.  Played to perfection by Johnny Depp, Sparrow is a Captain mysteriously in search of a ship.  We find out later that this is because his erstwhile crew left him to die on a desert island, a happenstance never well explained, but then in this movie a lot is never well explained.  Jack lands in a seaport garrison governed by Jonathon Price in the part of Governor Weatherby Swann and announces he is going to steal a ship.  “Announces” may not be quite the right term, because he signs everything with his hands as he says it.  But his sign language is from a land quite distant from the Caribbean; such as men’s wear stores in Greenwich Village.  And he doesn’t actually say “steal” the ship either, he insists on “commandeer” the ship.  And he is not Jack Sparrow, but Captain Jack Sparrow, as well.  This throwaway humor is not just a minor facet of this movie, it’s the whole movie.  It’s all that’s left after the endless swordfights against the cursed pirates who can’t die.  What fun is a sword fight if no one dies?  I don’t know, but this is a Disney production, so there you have it.  Zombie swordfights were probably invented by Disney to allow authentic lethal fighting without blood or death.  It kind of works...

So we are in a garrison seaport governed by Jonathon Price, who appears to have completed a special softening program just for this movie, so he could appear even more flaccid than his Cardinal in the “Affair of the Necklace.”  But flaccid he is and he takes up where Keira Knightly’s screen mom left off in “Bend it Like Beckham,” stuffing her into the clothes of a fashionable woman.  But it’s a subdued Knightly who plays Elizabeth Swann, at least in comparison to her role as the die-hard soccer buddy of Parminder Nagra in “Bend it Like Beckham.”  It’s as if director Gore Verbinski told Knightly to knock off the acting and be a dumb blond for this one time and he would make it up to her later.  It pretty-much worked.  She packs herself into a corset and falls into the sea to be rescued by (Captain) Sparrow; as it turns out, the luckiest meeting since Leonardo DiCaprio met his father’s killer Daniel Day-Lewis in “Gangs of New York.”  I mean, without the introduction, where would the movie have gone?

Which brings us back to Sparrow’s point for being in the seaport in the first place, to steal, er, “commandeer”, a ship.  And after meeting Elizabeth and noticing she was wearing the cursed gold medallion, he is once again on the lam.  Sparrow spends a lot of time either running or sword-fighting in this movie and this time he runs and then sword-fights with non other than Orlando Bloom in the part of Will Turner.  As you’ll know after the opening scenes in the movie, Elizabeth first found the cursed medallion around Will’s neck when they were both children and he was rescued from certain death after a pirate attack.  So, she did the natural thing and stole it.  Maybe she missed her real calling, that of female pirate.  Or maybe that’s the sequel, we’ll have to wait and see.

It’s a little odd to see Orlando without a bow in his hand, after having seen him in the first two “Lord of the Rings” movies as Legolas, the honorable elf who can modify a Uruk’s bad dental work with an arrow from a hundred paces.  But we should have known what was in store when he made that fancy skate-board move with the shield down the ramparts of the besieged city of Gondor.  He and Depp play Fred and Ginger with more free-style moves than the Venice Beach sidewalk surfers and the most marvelous dueling, complete with crashing chandeliers, launching levers and rope swings that put Tarzan to shame.  And don’t forget the rope slashing.  There is rope slashing that sets ships free, raises heroes up, crashes villains down, flips cogs and levers into motion and just generally turns the world on its ear.

But speaking of villains, my favorite part in the show goes to Captain Hook himself, or rather Captain Barbossa, played by the great Geoffrey Rush in a performance that takes bad teeth to the stars.  Barbossa doesn’t want to be called “Captain” like Jack Sparrow; he has other things on his mind, like a curse that occasionally turns his pecs into deformed bones draped with rotting shreds of flesh.  Thank goodness his smile is intact.  Which brings us back to Will and Elizabeth.  One of them holds the key to the curse and only Jack Sparrow knows the combination to Davy Jones locker.  Or am I mixing metaphors?

Typical of most Disney releases, the cinematography in “Pirates” is a joy to behold and makes the film a pleasure to watch, at least for the first 90 minutes until the never-ending sword fights begin.  This film is not about beautiful vistas and sunsets over the harbor.  It’s about foggy nights and moldy wooden ships gliding silently through the fog to some unknown destination.  Sparrow’s compass is broken from the first scene through the entire movie, but he never loses it or fails to consult it for direction.  As his crewman says, “It’s no good unless you want to go north, anyway.”  The cursed Black Pearl slowly making way through the miasma with shredded sails, useless as Sparrow’s compass, tells the audience that this ship is not hauling Federal Express.  When the fleeing Black Pearl jettisons barrels and crates in an effort to outrun the faster Interceptor, the Interceptor doesn’t just push the flotsam out of the way, as a real ship would do, it runs over the debris, crushing and sinking it beneath the ponderous belly of the floating behemoth.  The ship becomes the Hound of the Baskervilles and the Headless Horseman put together, wordlessly destroying all who stand in its way, then disappearing into the mist and gloom of the night.

The ensuing battle between the two ships and the shelling of the seaport fortress are great entertainment, with all the blasting, shattering, flying bricks and paraphernalia required for a good old-fashioned sea battle.  When the Black Pearl is reduced to loading the cannons with flatware for lack of cannon balls, the results are amazing, funny and almost plausible at the same time.  And by that time in the movie, almost plausible seems pretty realistic.

All-in-all, this is great movie with a good heart and a happy ending.  The music by Klaus Badelt is serious in a simple way, well synchronized with the running and fighting, and not taking too many brain cells to assimilate.  I am pleased to see Depp take a lighter approach than in his previous “From Hell” debacle, which exploited bloody violence in general and violence against women in particular.  He is certainly a man of many talents, and he has to be careful to use them.  Between him, Orlando Bloom and Geoffrey Rush, you would have to be under a spell to miss the treasure in “Pirates of the Caribbean.”