For another, the supremely charismatic Chow Yun-Fat (Crouching Tiger, Curse of the Golden Flower) is aboard as Capt. Sao Feng. The Singapore-based buccaneer has eyes for Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley, looking great in slouch boots) who, it seems, no longer has eyes for Will Turner (Orlando Bloom, the human Bermuda Triangle, sucking the life out of these action-adventure flicks).
The film is set in an era when the armada of the East India Co. hangs pirates to make the seven seas safe for its corporate endeavors. Barbossa, Feng and Sparrow are three of nine freebooters united to preserve the pirate way of life. Or would be, if anyone could find Sparrow, hostage of Davy Jones' Locker, a kind of saltwater anteroom of hell.
Here the seas are high in more ways than one. The movie finds Jack - some time before his pirate brethren do - as he's experiencing the effects of demon rum. Jack's imaginary vessel has run aground in the desert sands, a striking image that brings to mind the title structure in Howl's Moving Castle.
Jack spits at his hallucinations, which include a goateed and dreadlocked crew of himselves, "I wash my hands of this weirdness!" More's the pity, for his visions, with their affectionate satires of Being John Malkovich, The Gold Rush and Master and Commander, are the tastiest passages in the overdone picture.
What does it say about Gore Verbinski's movie that Jack's delusions are the most coherent thing? That the visual jokes are of the my-spyglass-is-bigger-than-yours variety? That not even the most extreme POTC-head can follow what in the Jolly Roger is going on?
