Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales – Film Review

“Dead Men Tell No Tales” is the return of the franchise to where it really left off in 2007’s “At World’s End” I haven’t seen the fourth entry but from what I gathered it had little to do with the overall story. This entry picks up many years later from the end of the third entry. With this being released 10 years later it felt that there had been enough time to tell this story to have some considerable impact by the films conclusion.

Kaya Scodelario and Brenton Thwaites did a great job leading the film with their new characters. Brenton plays Henry Turner, Elizabeth and Will’s son and Kaya plays a new character named Carina who is an astronomer. Johnny Depp does his usual to be Jack Sparrow. I felt this time he was more of a background character that didn’t have much leadership. Though I did like the direction the character took of being a washed up alcoholic with not much to live for. That could have been explored or defined better. Barbossa returns as a great counterpoint to Jack and all of their scenes together work well.

Find Jack Sparrow for me and relay a message, from Captain Salazar. Tell him: death will come straight for him. Will you say that to him, please?

I appreciated how simple the storyline was in this film compared to the previous films. There was a main objective that all the characters partake in to obtaining the object of affection. Javier Bardem’s character of Captain Salazar was a great villain. He felt ruthless and didn’t seem either redeemable or lackluster. The character design for Salazar’s crew and ship were very well done. I liked how the moved as they were underwater zombies. The zombie sharks were well done. Another highlight for me was the execution scene. It had a great sense of tension but was also very comedic.

From a directing standpoint I felt every shot was very beautifully done. A lot of great cinematography that was great to look at on screen. Some of the negatives I had with the film is that there wasn’t a whole lot that was new or felt fresh to what we had seen previously. There was character reveal that I felt was not well developed and a sacrifice that I felt didn’t land as strong as it could have. I found it entertaining collectively but it did miss a little bit of freshness that the film needed. Overall I felt this wrapped up with a great conclusion for some characters that lead into some interesting forecasting for the next entry in the franchise.

7.5/10

css.php Skip to content