Pirates Of The Caribbean

Such was the damage inflicted on the genre’s credibility by 1996’s unbelievably dreadful Cutthroat Island, it has taken a full seven years for anyone to even dare attempt another riff on the old-fashioned sword-pirate swashbuckler. In short, Renny Harlin, Geena Davis and their bloated, benighted movie practically killed off the genre for all time. Nonetheless, seven years down the line, director Gore Verbinski (Mouse Hunt, The Mexican, The Ring) has summoned the courage to give it a shot.

Utilising two of Hollywood’s more bankable pretty-boys – Johnny Depp and Lord Of The Rings’ Orlando Bloom – Pirates Of The Caribbean is extremely formulaic, but highly competent in a Saturday-matinee sense. Set (obviously enough) on the Caribbean high seas in the 17th century, it stars Depp as a roguish but impeccably honourable pirate legend named Jack Sparrow, who teams up with Bloom when the latter’s childhood pal (Keira Knightley) is kidnapped by the dastardly captain Barbarossa (Geoffrey Rush) and his band of cut-throats, who have also stolen Sparrow’s beloved ship, the Black Pearl. Thus forced to take over the HMS Interloper – the fastest ship in the British fleet – the pair race after the girl and her evil captors.

Whilst it will hardly amaze you to be informed that nothing even faintly original occurs at any stage of the proceedings, there’s certainly nothing here that you could seriously fault. Depp has always been a hugely capable actor behind the cheekbones, and although the profoundly limited Bloom strains every time he’s challenged to deliver more than two sentences of dialogue, the script goes out of its way to mask his inadequacies. En route, there’s some hair-raising swordplay, quite a few stirring skirmishes, passages of mildly tiresome buddy-movie convention, and your time-honoured posh girl-falls-for-devilish rogue scenario.

Pirates Of The Caribbean certainly won’t change any lives, and seriously stretches endurance at 145 minutes, but it’s lively enough to justify a few months in the ’plexes.