“I once knew a Spaniard named… something in Spanish.”
| Directors | Year | Genre | Run time | Rating |
| Joachim Rønning & Espen Sandberg | 2017 | Action, Adventure, Fantasy, | 129 min |  |
It’s been fourteen years since the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie positively surprised everyone. Basing a blockbuster on something as flimsy as a Disney ride seemed ludicrous, but the film turned out to be fresh, nimble and charming. Today, the fifth entry in this $4 billion franchise has become the anti-thesis of the original. The Revenge of Salazar is stale, cumbersome and insufferable. This is a film that makes filmmaking look hard, not because it’s impressive, but because you feel all the struggle and work that went into the production, while witnessing the lack of payoff.
Imagine a comedy where a drunk and/or crazy person pitches our sensible character, possibly a Hollywood producer, the most nonsensical idea imaginable for a blockbuster. The gag here is just how terrible this idea is, on every conceivable level. The plot is mindnumbingly convoluted and bloated, character motivations are nonexistent. There be unnecessary flashbacks and corny drama whenever you pause to sip your beer: relaying this pitch truly makes you sound like a mad man. In this hypothetical film, the drunk and/or crazy person could very well be pitching The Revenge of Salazar, and the joke would land spectacularly. I won’t try to explain this craziness, but boiled down to its very essentials, the film focuses Jack Sparrow teaming up with Henry Turner and Carina Smyth, to search for the trident of Poseidon.
There are redeeming qualities to this film, but they are few and far between. While the plot is only consistent in its lack of sense, it does carry you from gag to gag. There are many gags, and a decent number of them work. The opening number is a ripoff of the brilliant heist-sequence from Fast 5, where the crew attached a safe to some beefed up cars and dragged it through modern day Rio de Janeiro. A ludicrous idea to be sure, but given that franchise’s disregard for the laws of physics, it was a hugely enjoyable stunt. The Pirates franchise, of course, is similarly unconstrained by Newton’s findings, but Revenge of Salazar stretches our credulity to the breaking point and beyond. Rather than cars, horses are the dragging power here, and rather than just the safe, these horses drag the entire bank building through the streets. Our disbelief is not suspended, and despite the impressive effects, the set piece fails to engage. Not only is the premise for this gag incredulous, but it seemingly goes on forever, and thus perfectly encapsulates the entire film: Poorly conceived and overlong, but somewhat entertaining.
I was rarely bored during the film. The gags are frequent and big, and while they leave much to be desired, they do somewhat succeed in beating you into submission. Every now and then a truly delightful gag even shows up. The ones concerning the lacking vocabulary of your average pirate work particularly well, like this one:
We need to talk about Jack Sparrow. So much of the original film’s success and freshness came from Johnny Depp’s unexpected performance. Between Depp’s professional string of flops (The Tourist, The Lone Ranger, Transcendence, Mortdecai) and personal scandals (throwing phones at, and being divorced from, Amber Heard), it’s difficult to remember that for a decade he was the biggest movie star on Planet Earth. (In 2009 he was paid a staggering £21 million for the fourth Pirates movie.) Not only was he the box office gold – critic’s and cinephiles loved him. In retrospect, however, it was the worst thing that could have happened to him. Depp has become a cautionary tale, a reminder of how dangerous success can be. The Jack Sparrow character that brought him fame and fortune and elevated the first Pirates movie has now grown as stale as the franchise itself. Revenge of Salazar bring Sparrow to the forefront, but that character was always better as the spice than the meal. The mythology is expanded here, but did we really need an origin story of Jack Sparrow? In truth, it only demystifies him and makes him less appealing. Jack Sparrow the charming enigma is gone, replaced by Jack Sparrow the trite clown.
There are other characters in this film, but none of them work. Javier Bardem is lost behind make-up, visual effects, and a thinly written villain, while Henry and Carina are too obviously a copy of Will and Elizabeth. Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly both return for brief cameos, but only to remind audiences why they once cared about this franchise.
The complaints about Revenge of Salazar far outnumber its merits, but at the end of the day this film tries to do nothing but entertain, and I must confess I found it mildly entertaining, despite its numerous shortcomings.
Links:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1790809/combined
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_of_the_Caribbean:_Dead_Men_Tell_No_Tales
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/pirates_of_the_caribbean_dead_men_tell_no_tales/
http://www.metacritic.com/movie/pirates-of-the-caribbean-dead-men-tell-no-tales/critic-reviews
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=potc5.htm
Peeping Cinema - Thoughts on Film 