Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End Release Date: May 25, 2007 Starring: Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley, Orlando Bloom, Geoffrey Rush, Chow Yun-Fat, Bill Nighy, Naomie Harris, Keith Richards, Stellan Skarsgård Directed by: Gore Verbinski
Any lingering doubts that the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is modeling itself after the original Star Wars trilogy can be put to rest in the opening sequence of At World's End, which finds our heroes Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) infiltrating the lair of a notorious bandit to resurrect their roguish colleague Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp). Only instead of a giant slug named Jabba, their target is legendary Chinese pirate Sao Feng (Chow Yun-Fat), who possesses the maps to Davy Jones' Locker where Sparrow lives on in a bizarre sort of purgatory. Briskly paced and well-acted by Chow, Knightley, and even Bloom, this sequence seems to suggest that the series has recovered its sea legs after the general incoherence of the second movie, Dead Man's Chest. "Maybe, just maybe," you'll find yourself thinking, "this will be one of those rare third movies that won't disappoint."
A long 170 minutes later, you'll likely stumble out of the theater in a Dolby-induced haze, eardrums shattered from the relentless booming of the soundtrack and head swimming from the haphazardly structured narrative. Complain all you like about the Ewoks and Carrie Fisher's zombified performance, at least Return of the Jedi gets from Point A to Point C with relatively little fuss. At World's End, on the other hand, begins at Point A, gets sidetracked on the way to Point B, jumps ahead to Point F and then circles back on itself eventually winding up at Point C almost by accident. It's not so much that the story is hard to follow — it's that there's no real story being told at all. At World's End is packed with incident, but on a scene-to-scene level this leaky vessel just barely stays afloat.
