Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge

Has too much time passed since the last Pirates of the Caribbean film? A lot has changed in block­buster cin­e­ma in the inter­ven­ing six years, not least John­ny Depp’s bank­a­bil­i­ty, which he now seems hell­bent on sab­o­tag­ing. He’s com­fort­ably the worst thing about Salazar’s Revenge (aka Pirates 5 aka Dead Men Tell No Tales aka The Paul McCart­ney One), and yet iron­i­cal­ly he is also the main rea­son for the franchise’s con­tin­ued exis­tence. It’s a pret­ty weak foun­da­tion on which to mount an epi­cal­ly-scaled spec­ta­cle such as this.

Hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly crossed over into awk­ward self-par­o­dy some time around 2007’s At World’s End (aka Pirates 3 aka The Kei­th Richards One), Depp’s per­for­mance here resem­bles that of a man who left port a long, long time ago. He stag­gers and flails and mum­bles and slosh­es his way through the film, his sun-drunk rou­tine so utter­ly bereft of charm and charis­ma that it’s hard to recall what it was that made the char­ac­ter so pop­u­lar in the first place. But then actor and fran­chise have had to deal with dimin­ish­ing returns for the vast por­tion of their 14-year union.

They say a good cap­tain always goes down with his ship – it will cer­tain­ly be inter­est­ing to see what hap­pens should this film fail to recoup its eye-water­ing $230m bud­get. Yet in some respects it would be a shame to see the swash­buck­ling saga end here because, under the stew­ard­ship of direc­tors Joachim Røn­ning and Espen Sand­berg, this so-called ​“soft reboot” serves up some of the most enter­tain­ing moments in the entire series.

The light­ly revamped sto­ry opens with a young sailor named Hen­ry (Bren­ton Thwait­es) being spared his life by Javier Bardem’s epony­mous ​“Mata­dor del Mar”, on the pro­vi­so that he track down Salazar’s neme­sis. The search doesn’t last long though, as in the very next scene we’re rein­tro­duced to a per­ma-tanned/­soz­zled Jack Spar­row via a thrilling prac­ti­cal effects-dri­ven bank heist scene that Buster Keaton would be proud of. From here the film sinks like so much ship­wrecked loot as ama­teur astron­o­my, zom­bie sharks and a mean­der­ing sub­plot con­cern­ing Poseidon’s Tri­dent ensue.

Røn­ning and Sand­berg were pre­sum­ably hired off the back of their hand­some 2012 film Kon-Tiki – anoth­er high-seas adven­ture involv­ing a leg­endary ves­sel – and to their cred­it they keep things mov­ing along at a brisk pace while adding a splash of old-school moviemak­ing mag­ic to pro­ceed­ings. Ulti­mate­ly though the task of squar­ing Depp’s calami­tous lead turn with a suc­ces­sion of murky CG set-pieces and a bloat­ed nar­ra­tive proves too great for them.

Oh, and just a quick word on Macca’s brief appear­ance: baf­fling though it is, remark­ably his is nei­ther the most unex­pect­ed nor most embar­rass­ing cameo in this whole cursed mess.