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Review by Harvey Karten
1½ stars out of 4
Special effects or not, for swashbuckling action modern films have a tough act
to follow if they're out to equal the gems that graced Errol Flynn's repertory
of films involving clashing swords, exploding muskets, passionate romance and
boundless energy. The Tasmanian superhero and real life lover, the subject of
many a scandalous article in magazines that preceded `People,'could knock his
audience dead with fare like Michael Curtiz's 1936 epic`The Charge of the Light
Brigade' (based on Tennyson's poem about an immortal charge into the valley of
death by British 27th Lancers cavalry) and Raoul Walsh's `They Died with their
Boots On' (featuring a Flynn as the unlucky loser at the Little Bighorn battle).
Tyrone Power was no slouch in that department either, a drop-dead handsome
performer whose role in an adaptation of a Sabatini novel `The Black Swan' in
1942 involved his saving Maureen O'Hara from the Clutches of George Sanders and
Anthony Quinn. While swashbuckler/pirate pics never really went out of style.
Witness Steven Spielberg's joyless `Hook' which dealt with Robin Williams'
rediscovering his identity to rescue his children from Captain Hook's clutches
and Renny Harlin's uninvolving `Cutthroat Island' (wherein pirate Geena Davis
joins forces with Matthew Modine to avenge her father's death and find a
treasure map). These offered no template on which to base future action movies
of that kind.
If such fare is to capture the youthful generation as did the swashbucklers of
the past, a serious treatment is in order. What we get instead from Disneywho,
word is, wants to use this as a base for distributing a string of films of that
subgenreis a jumble combining special effects technology to illustrate yet
another bunch of undead dudes with a campy performance by Johnny Depp as the
unlikely savior of a woman kidnaped by a swinish 17th century pirate captain who
has been alive (in a way) for the past 300 years but has not lost his zest for
action. The principal trouble with the overlong production is that Depp, a
stellar character actor, is limited to a one-joke medley of tics and spastic
gestures that pall before he's on the screen for twenty minutes or so. The
swordfights are endless and tiresome, the buffoonish undead characters, one of
whom keeps losing his left eye, recovering it and slapping it on like a pair of
1960's style contact lenses, indulge in terminally stale slapstick.
As background to the story, Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) lost his ship,
the Black Pearl, was stolen by his rival, Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush). When
Barbossa invades the town of Port Royal, abducting the daughter, Elizabeth Swann
(Keira Knightley) of the British governor (Jonathan Pryce), three men are
determined to rescue her. One is the upper class Commodore Norrington (Jack
Davenport) whose rival (and, of course, the man preferred by the kidnapee), mere
blacksmith Will Turner, eventually joins with the Captain Sparrow. In the
melodramatic tradition, the balance of power shifts regularly between the
charming Captain Sparrow and his ruthless rival while at home, the blacksmith
and the commodore are vying for the hand of the beautiful governor's daughter.
To put the film in tune with the taste of the modern summer blockbuster
audience, Captain Barbossa and his crew are cursed even more than Coleridge's
Ancient Mariner and company, as they must live for an eternity, turning into
skeletons nightly by the light of the moon, until a plundered treasure is
restored.
Needless to say in this campy version, the entire population on the screen are
virtually winking at the audience, not the least being the weird guy forever
losing his left eye like a modern miss searches a basketball floor for her
displaced lens. Johnny Depp tries all too mightily to evoke laughs with his
jagged bodily gestures, a case study for a modern neurologist who is clued in
that he developed his tics because of an unfortunate exile on a tiny, isolated
island.
Perhaps only the cast were more uncomfortable during the filming than those in
the audience who go along with my views. The action takes place on St. Vincent
Island, one of those dots on the map without luxury hotels that the super-rich
populate in order to be away from the Hilton-loving nouveau riches or to brag
about how much discomfort they were able to stand. The film cost $125 million to
produce, a sum that would go a long way toward providing a traveler with a few
years' beachcoming throughout the Caribbean.
Copyright © 2003 Harvey Karten
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out of 4
