Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest Movie Review

Captain Jack is back! In 2003 Johnny Depp lurched onto our screens and into our hearts as the ever-so-slightly bonkers Jack Sparrow, and a movie that most had dismissed unseen as a spin off from a ride turned into an unexpected summer smash for Disney. And now pretty much all of the cast from The Curse of the Black Pearl have reunited to make Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, and revive the trend for films with very long titles.

It opens with Depp in splendid form, and the arrest of Elizabeth Swann (Knightley) and Will Turner (Bloom) for having conspired to release Jack at the end of the first film. There’s a new power in the Caribbean – The East India Company, personified by ruthless pirate hunter Lord Cutler Beckett (Hollander), who wants control of the seas and will stop at nothing to get it. There’s no room for free traders in his world. Anyway, Jack has a magical compass which Beckett wants in order to find the legendary Davey Jones (Nighy). For whoever possesses Davy Jones’ locker controls Jones, ruler of the ocean depths.

As it happens, Jack also owes a debt to Captain Jones, and he’s about to claim it back with interest. Jack, craven fellow that he is, sets sail for land where he’ll be safe from Jones, but with everyone after him on land and on sea Jack is running out of places to hide.

There’s a heck of a lot going on in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and it shares the flaws of the first film in being a bit long and repetitious. But, like the first film, it’s still inventive and funny, with some genuinely scary moments. The stellar supporting cast are all back: Jonathan Pryce, Mackenzie Crook and Jack Davenport are joined by Naomie Harris, almost unrecognisable as soothsayer Tia Dalma and Will’s supposedly dead father Bootstrap Bill (Skarsgard).

There are lots of new monsters and the effects are fantastic – I don’t actually know how they did Bill Nighy’s squid face, whether it’s a combination of prosthetics and CGI, but its completely convincing. Davy Jones’ men, living as they do underwater, gradually turn into sea creatures and the costume and make up departments obviously had a field day. Can’t wait for those DVD extras explaining how they achieved it all.



If it does have flaws, in some ways it’s purely sequelitis – the first film, overlong as it was, was so fresh and unexpected that you forgave it. But now we’re expecting that freshness, that same lightness of touch, and though the film tries hard, it feels like it’s trying hard. I was pleased at the beginning when Elizabeth was locked in jail – I hoped she’d stay there for the whole film, but of course she manages to get out and, disguised rather ineffectually as a boy, joins a ship’s crew in search of Will and Jack. Knightley is an attractive girl but she and Orblando Bloom sadly are as wooden as ever and her jaw seems to have a life of its own – in one scene I thought she’d dislocated it, like a snake.

I went in not realising that it’s a two-parter, and was dumbfounded by the number of plot strands that seemed to be unravelling with no hope of resolution as the film went on. So it ends on a cliffhanger, inviting us to come back next year. And we will.

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