Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (Blu-ray)

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A mess? Bloated? Overplotted? Slow-paced? Disappointing? The weakest one?

I'd heard (or rather, read) it all. But I didn't have to get very far into "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" before I began to wonder, Are we talking about the same movie?

Having seen just about every pirate film that's ever been made, I've always considered myself a connoisseur of the genre. And I'd have to rate two out of three "Pirates of the Caribbean" entries among the best that the genre has produced--right up there with "Captain Blood" and "The Sea Hawk" (starring Errol Flynn), "The Crimson Pirate" (Burt Lancaster), and "Treasure Island" (Robert Newton).

The one I'd relegate to the second tier of swashbuckling shenanigans isn't "At World's End." Rather, it's the second installment, "Dead Man's Chest," which struck me as being more worthy of those critical grenades (including ones lobbed by our own John J. Puccio, who called it "almost incomprehensible" in his DVD review.

Sorry, readers, but I have to disagree. It's the second film that I think is almost incomprehensible--a narrative mess that seems strung together just to link several high-concept sequences. I found the second film much more confusing than the third. Like, why was Capt. Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) in some sort of Turkish prison at the outset, and how did he escape inside a coffin that was thrown to the sea? While it makes for a great reintroduction to the character and provides a strong comic-visual scene to have a bird land on the coffin and get blown away by a pistol shot from inside, it's never really explained what was going on in the first place. And then how does Jack end up on Cannibal Island as the chief, while his men are hung up inside great, round bone cages? And that sword-fighting scene we see later that has the principles fighting while atop and inside a great big rolling wheel? It appears as quickly as the ship, which seems to come like a dog whenever Capt. Sparrow needs it.

The cynic in me suspects that producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Gore Verbinski told their writers to come up with some high-concept scenes that would be just great for inspiring action-figure toys and giving the special effects people new challenges, and then figure out how to connect them with dialogue and plot. That's really how "Dead Man's Chest" seemed to me: a slightly haphazard collection of gimmicks that appeals to the kid in everyone, but doesn't have the same clear narrative thrust of the original.

Maybe it's because I expected more of the same in the third installment that I was pleasantly surprised. After a grim-but-memorable opening that has the government (an apparent puppet of the East India Trading Company, in yet another swipe at politics today) taking away the rights of citizens and partaking in an all-out witch hunt to hang anyone even remotely accused of piracy. A song sung by a boy sets everything lyrically in motion, and the time of the end of the pirates is near. They must assemble as a council, the nine legendary captains, to craft a plan on where to make their last stand. Trouble is, one of those nine is incommunicado, and so Captain Barbosa (Geoffrey Rush), Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) and the gang head for Singapore to swipe a navigational map from Capt. Feng (Chow Yun-Fat) that would show them how to rescue Capt. Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) from the bowels of Davy Jones' locker--that is, to bring him back from the world of the dead. Sparrow died before he could pass on his captain's medallion, and coins (if you'll recall from the first film) are of critical importance. Turner has his own agenda, because he's still wanting to rescue his father from the clutches of Davy Jones (Bill Nighy). There are twists and turns, an appearance from an ancient goddess, and a climactic maelstrom battle with the forces of evil (the East India Trading Company). But it's not all that difficult to follow.

What's difficult to swallow is director Gore Verbinski's decision to create multiple Jack Sparrows to illustrate Jack's confused state of mind in the Davy Jones' locker sequences. It's overwrought and a tonal departure from the rest of the film. But even worse is the decision to take a page from an old Pluto cartoon and have miniature good and bad Jacks whispering in Capt. Sparrow's ear, trying to sway him. For my pieces of eight, those were the weakest sequences in a film that moved along briskly enough to make the adjective "rousing" still apply.

The only other head-snapping moment comes when a woman becomes king of the pirates. But hey, it's a gender-equal world we live in now, and besides, it's not that far-fetched. Mary Read and Anne Bonny were two actual pirates.

By now, all of the characters have grown into their roles so that they appear as comfortable as the Harry Potter kids returning to Hogwarts. The narrative and emotional through-line is stronger in "At World's End" than it was in the second film, and for me that makes it a better film, especially when the special effects are at least as good. and the visual design--especially in the Singapore and "Calypso" sequences--is nothing short of stunning.

If only there weren't too many Jacks . . . .

Video:
The minute you see the talking-skull menu board, you know you're in for a quality Hi-Def experience. And this MPEG-4 transfer to a 50-gig dual layered disc is perfect. There were complaints about framing issues from the first films, but a comparison with several scenes from the DVD lead me to conclude that Disney has solved the problem. Black levels are superb-which is essential for a film that has so many dark corners and mist, to keep things from looking murky. But the edge detail is strong, and the 1080p picture looks natural, with zero in the way of "noisiness" that often comes with atmospheric backgrounds (and is more noticeable on Hi-Def). It's a solid transfer, presented in 2.35:1 aspect ratio.