Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (Cert. 12A, 168 min)
Starring: Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Geoffrey Rush, Chow Yun-Fat
Director: Gore Verbinski
IN THE same week that the Cutty Sark went up in flames, we now bear witness to another maritime disaster.
Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World’s End is not a complete shipwreck but it sails perilously close, capsizing in the first hour under the weight of audience expectation.
Rumbustious action set-pieces, augmented with spectacular computer-generated effects, bookend this third instalment of the series, and cute comic interludes buoy the downbeat mood.
However, there’s no mistaking warning flares sent up by Johnny Depp, who looks interminably bored with his character, salty seadog Jack Sparrow.
He barely musters the energy to deliver a performance. If you haven’t seen the first two films, there’s very little point seeing At World’s End.
Screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio presume audiences are savvy with the characters and their fates, chugging full steam ahead with the quest to rescue Jack from Davy Jones’s locker.
Falling foul of a pact forged with the multi-tentacled Davy Jones (Bill Nighy), Jack finds himself consigned to purgatory.
Thankfully, lovebirds Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley, left) have joined forces with Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) to rescue Jack from walking the plank to eternal damnation.
They head to Singapore to meet with Chinese pirate Sao Feng (Chow Yun-Fat), in the hope of creating an alliance against the despicable East India Trading Company, which now controls Davy and his vessel, The Flying Dutchman.
The overblown action sequences are thrilling as expected, and Jack’s hare-brained scheme to escape The Land Of The Dead definitely shivers the timbers, as does Keith Richards’s delicious appearance as Sparrow Snr, strumming a guitar and dispensing cryptic advice to his wastrel son.
Knightley is thrust to the fore in this third film, usurping both Bloom and Depp and flings herself into the melee with impressive sword fights. Bloom postures and pouts with fervour, while Depp press-gangs the few decent one-liners.
Supporting performances are drowned out by Hans Zimmer’s bombastic orchestral score.
The romance between Elizabeth and Will is soaked through with sappiness, resolved in the midst of the titanic final battle in a manner that will have even the most ardent fan screaming “Plausibility overboard!”
In truth, Gore Verbinski’s film can weather an entire armada of critical drubbing: Dead Man’s Chest became only the third film in history to gross in excess of $1bn worldwide.
Audiences adore Depp’s swaggering anti-hero and the cliffhanger finish of the second film will attract cinemagoers in their droves, quite possibly shattering box office records.
Unfortunately, once the initial storm of excitement and anticipation blows itself out, At World’s End will be dead in the water.
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