‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales’ Review

The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise has always been a guilty pleasure of mine. While the first one is enjoyed by almost everyone, the sequels often have mixed results. Personally, I really enjoyed the second and third entries because they carry on the fun tone of the first movie, while I am not a fan of the fourth movie because it was a complete shift from what made the first three so much fun. 

While I don’t think this film is necessarily as good as the first three, I had a lot of fun with this movie and it made me remember what makes these movies so much fun.

Plot

In Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) teams up with two new characters: Henry Turner ( Brenton Thwaites) and Carina Smith ( Kaya Scodelario). They are on the hunt for the trident of Poseidon, which is said to break any curse. 

Henry is the son of William Turner (Orlando Bloom) and he wants to free his father from the curse of the Flying Dutchman. As they travel, they are being hunted by Captain Salazar (Javier Bardem), a ghost who has a personal vendetta against Jack Sparrow for killing him a long time ago. Our heroes must beat the ghost pirates to the trident first in order to free everyone from their curses.

Characters

Depp is great as always as Captain Jack, however, it seems as though in this movie, he is overdoing the Captain Jack voice. It was a little bit hard to understand what he was saying at times, but he is still funny and crude as usual.

I also think both of the newcomers, Thwaites and Scodelario, did a good job. I enjoyed their relationship and I ended up caring about the story of these two characters. There was actually a little depth to their characters. Bardem was also a great villain. He was very menacing and the design of his character was really cool.

I also enjoyed seeing a lot of returning faces. Geoffrey Rush is back as Captain Barbossa and he is always awesome. There is something about his performance that just makes him the perfect pirate. Kevin McNally is back as Mr. Gibbs and I enjoy his character a lot. Bloom, unfortunately, is only in the movie for maybe 3 minutes but it is nice to see him back in a Pirates movie.

Directors

Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg take the director’s chair for this movie and I think they did a good job for the most part. The main thing that’s great about Pirate movies is the action scenes and that is no exception here. They are a lot of fun and a lot of the set pieces are very creative. There are many shots that just look beautiful.

The special effects in this movie are also great. The design of the ghost crew is really cool to look at and even though there is a lot of CGI, it’s handled pretty well.

Flaws

I did have an issue with the main narrative of this movie. It is not exactly focused. It keeps jumping back and forth between two things: freeing Will Turner and Salazar’s revenge for Sparrow. It feels a bit uneven and it didn’t feel like the movie had a narrative focus. However, I did like the fact that they tried to follow the story from the first three.

Also, the humor in this movie was hit or miss. Sometimes I got a pretty good laugh, while other times the joke just fell flat. Some jokes repeat throughout the movie and it can feel like they are beating a dead horse. 

Final Thoughts

Overall, I can say that I enjoyed this movie, however, it’s still lacking much of the unique charm from the first three. It may not be as good as the others, but it is a lot better than the fourth. If you did not like the first three, this probably won’t change your mind, but if you enjoy these movies for what they are, there is plenty of fun to be had.

Rating: 3/5