(This review may contain spoilers).
I’ve watched all of the Pirates of the Caribbean to date, so when I saw this movie advertised, I was immediately eager to see this movie.
It was nice to see a return to the story of the original trilogy. It was a bit sad to see Henry trying to find a way to save his father and Will being so completely resigned to his fate, though I was a bit surprised not to see anything of Elizabeth Swann until right at the end of the movie.
While I do like Jack Sparrow, it was good that he wasn’t the main character like in the previous movie. I don’t think he’s a character who can carry the whole movie – and I felt a lot less of his brilliance came through in this movie. It was good to see the flashback and I was quite impressed with the younger version of Jack Sparrow.
While it was good to see Barbossa put in an appearance in this movie (I really like his character. I’ve felt that he’s really interesting and multidimensional), I didn’t really care about his crew, so when members died, I was pretty ambivalent about it. Plus, it seemed like he had an infinite number of crew members.
While I did like Henry, I didn’t especially like Carina and I felt the romance between them wasn’t necessary and didn’t really add anything to the plot.
I did feel like the plot of this movie was something of a repeat of the first, with the dead/zombie pirates. While there were some good special effects in the movie, it was hard to watch it and not think of the first film.
There were some really good moments of humour and I thought it was good to see that there were elements of realism, such as sores and scabies.
The movie was entertaining and I did enjoy watching it. It kept me engaged throughout and I cared about Henry’s goal, even if I was a bit less sure of what drove Carina. I would watch the movie again, even though I won’t buy the DVD as soon as it comes out.
If you watch this movie, make sure you stay until the very end of the credits.
Ink of Blood 