Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales Review

For a film franchise based on a long-time popular Disneyland attraction, Pirates of the Caribbean really know how to flog a dead horse (that’s actually not a bad subtitle), with its fifth instalment Dead Men Tell No Tales having now arrived at cinema shores worldwide.

The film reunites faces of old. Will Turner (Bloom) – who has seen much better days – is still trapped aboard The Flying Dutchman, while his son Henry (Brendan Thwaites), now a pirate expert and maritime mythologist, searches for the key to freeing his father: The Trident of Poseidon. Jack Sparrow (Depp) and Barbossa (Rush) join the voyage along with female astronomer Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario), while undead pirate-killer Salazar (Bardem) and his equally-undead crew are hot on their tail, looking to exact vengeance on Sparrow for leading them to their brutal deaths some decades before.

There are two main beefs I’ve long had with these films, the first being how fairly horrible the characters are to one another, which is still the case. Yes, I get that they’re pirates and that double-crossery is in their nature, but the problem is that it depraves the characters of any real likeability and renders the films as heartless as a dead man’s chest. The second is the action sequences, which remain nothing more than a series of deafening, visually-indecipherable flukes.

The real culprit here though is the plot, as the film randomly hops from one location to the next without notice, following no logical narrative route and with about as much direction as a fast-sinking ship. But perhaps the most exhausted feature of all is Depp himself. The infamous dreadlocked, sober-virgin, slur-speeched, timber-shivering swain Jack Sparrow has, in all of five films, shown not a single shred of real character development. All that said, the fact he’s the figurehead of the franchise is understandable given the rest of the equally anti-charismatic, yawn-inducing line-up. Bardem is no saving grace either, who plays the kind of villain we’ve now seen for the fourth time in the series.

Nevertheless, as the franchise continues to make tidal waves at the box office, it doesn’t look like we’ll be seeing it walk the plank any time soon.