Pirates Of The Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest
The Pirates Franchise certainly proved to be a lucrative boost in the career of one Johnny Depp, being both financially successful and also guaranteeing that if all else he ever does bombs, his legacy as Captain Jack Sparrow will always remain intact. Having the freedom to give the most self indulgent performances imaginable, Depp pulls off the constantly loopy beats of his character solely through the amazing strength of his undeniable charisma and more than likely an extremely patient director. But the real secret weapon for the popularity of the Sparrow character lies in him having a long running antagonist whom acting wise matches him every step of the way: Geoffrey Rush as Captain Hector Barbossa, the one guy with the 10+ year history with Sparrow and just about as much fun to watch as Depp himself. This 2006 entry in the series (Part 2) saw Depp lighting it up in his usual way, but Rush’s Barbossa was unfortunately sidelined for most of this one, leaving Sparrow as the foil for the lovebirds played by Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley while we meet up with a new villain in Bill Nighy’s Davy Jones, basically a Satan Of The Seven Seas with a backstory on top of that. Turns out that Sparrow had sold his soul to Jones in order to ascend to the level of Pirate Sea Captain, but only for 13 more years as he was given The Black Pearl ship to get him started. Unfortunately for Sparrow, there was a mutiny and at least 10 of those years saw Sparrow’s ship being captained by Barbossa. Now the time limit’s up so Sparrow convinces Bloom to go meet with Jones on his behalf, convinced that Jones will accept the substitute soul and allow him to continue on with his business at hand of raping and wenching the hapless Knightley until her former fiancée Norrington (Jack Davenport doing a fine third leading man routine) shows up, begging for work on Sparrow’s ship, an offer accepted so that all the other pirate crew members can mock him mercilessly for being a former disgraced Commodore. Meanwhile Bloom escapes the squid faced freak Jones to go help even up the psychological odds against Sparrow, determined as ever to pirate rape Knightley and then find any way out of his contract. Depp’s mincing and prancing here fails to be offset by Rush’s bombastic over the top acting as Barbossa, but at least most franchise rules are fully set in stone in this entry, the most key one being that death means absolutely NOTHING in these films, since a main character in this can be killed off and then brought back to life with no aftereffects by a sexy black witch (Naomie Harris) in order to keep the story rolling. Other roles of note include Bloom’s decrepit looking Pirate Ghost father (Stellan Skarsgard), Jonathan “Pope Francis” Pryce as the happy go lucky father in law / Governor being stripped of his wigs and placed under arrest for treason and Tom Hollander as the super smarmy government agent who seems to be channeling Tim Curry for much of his screentime en route to getting his balls blown apart in Part 3. The film does feature a well done 3 way dance between Sparrow, Norrington and Bloom with them doing battle on a giant wagon wheel as it plummets toward oblivion. It consists of some choice dialogue exchanges amongst its key characters. It proves that much of Sparrow’s appeal is based upon having a large cast around him to play off of and react to him. But it isn’t until the final scene that Rush as Barbossa is called off the bench and finally put back into the game, a development that only partially redeems the entirety of this second entry to get things back on track with Part 3…
7/10