‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales’

CAPTAIN Jack Sparrow returns in ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales’ (2017). The fifth instalment in a 14-year franchise that hints at having another one coming.

Running at a bloated two hours and 33 minutes, ‘Dead Men’ finds Sparrow doing what Sparrow does: blundering through burglaries, drinking rum, fleeing from PG 13 pirates.

True to the swashbuckling high jinks of the first film but too much of the same to truly catapult the franchise forward, ‘Dead Man’ makes up what it lacks in originality with a crop of fresh faces.

Introducing Will’s offspring Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites) and Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario) as clear stand-ins for the chemistry between Johnny Depp who reprises his role and the largely absent Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley, the film is bolstered by convincing performers from the young bloods with a little help from the vengeful Captain Salazar played by Javier Bardem.

Full of all the mutiny, revenge, double crosses and trouble on the high seas you can handle, ‘Dead Men’ does its thing for far longer than necessary with some dazzling set pieces in-between all the mind-numbingly familiar.

See this if you have plenty of time to spare and equal amounts of caffeine in your system then stay for the post-credit scene because somebody, somewhere didn’t think to put it mid-credits despite all the life you’ve already squandered on the film.

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