★★★☆☆
FOLLOWING the distinctly lacklustre On Stranger Tides, we have the fifth and seemingly final chapter in the long-running saga on the high seas. And while the franchise is well past its sell-by date, this is the most enjoyable outing since the first one.
What’s most evident this time around is that they have at least attempted to recharge the batteries. While, like the rest of the series, it is overcrowded with characters and plot strands, it’s far more streamlined than it’s ever been.
As the film’s UK subtitle suggests (in the US, it’s titled as Dead Men Tell No Tales), the plot focuses on the deceased and visibly decaying Spanish Captain Salazar (a scenery-chewing Javier Bardem, bottom-left) who has escaped the dreaded Devil’s Triangle and is out for blood against Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), who betrayed him many years ago.
Meanwhile, young Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites) is involved in a desperate search for the trident of Poseidon which, according to legend, holds the power to remove all the curses of the sea, including the one that has doomed his father, Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), aboard the ill-fated ship The Flying Dutchman. Inevitably, he teams up with Captain Jack, and feisty horologist Carina (Kaya Scodelario), to find the trident which Captain Salazar is also after.
The directorial reins have been handed over to Norwegian duo Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg, who seem to have been chosen for having made the Oscar-nominated Kon-Tiki, a far more human drama also set at sea.
The franchise has always been slave to a murky, ugly colour palette that has just never worked for me, but here they bring a welcome visual vibrancy to much of the scenes looking out at sea.
Where many of the big action sequences in the last two films in particular sort of ran into one another in the memorability stakes, the directing duo here find room for at least three or four genuinely entertaining and creative set-pieces, not least an early one which sees Captain Jack and his loyal crew dragging an entire building across town.
The fact the franchise is now taking ludicrous but entertaining cues from The Fast And The Furious series certainly isn’t a bad thing. It’s nothing particularly groundbreaking, taken both within or outwith the context of the series, but it’s also a perfectly enjoyable summer blockbuster fare that manages to wiggle its way out of the inert state in which the series had found itself.
Fans will find much to lap up as it quite neatly ties up loose ends and backstories only hinted at before. Jack’s youthful exploits (flashbacks therein have Depp’s face CGI-d to make him look younger), the ongoing Will Turner heritage chronicle and, most satisfyingly of all, giving franchise highlight Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) more to do than just stand around shouting one-liners in his exaggerated pirate accent.
It’s a blockbuster sequel that feels like it’s truly for the fans rather than trying to convince anyone who is not already on board. And do you know what? By this point that’s perfectly fine.
For what it is, a galumphing and overstuffed pirate adventure filled with zombie sharks, ghost ships, rotting pirates and out-with-a-bang humongous set-pieces, we have a fifth instalment that makes the franchise fun again.
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