Dazzling effects but Pirate plot thickens

May 24 2007 Mike Davies reviews the latest cinema releases

• PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END * * *
  Cert 12A, 168 mins

Pretty much the definition of the term ‘critic-proof’, there seems little doubt that, dwarfing Spider-Man 3. the third instalment of the trilogy is going to break every box office record going for the biggest opening ever.

Unlike the web-slinging blockbuster it should also show little slippage in its second week.

It is, unquestionably, one of the most visually spectacular films you’ll have ever seen. The set design is jaw-dropping, the special effects even more so and there are images here of breathtaking hauntingly sad beauty while the action sequences are guaranteed to have your pulse racing off the scale.

So, why only a three star rating? Because, though less repetitive than Dead Man’s Chest, it’s equally prone to narrative confusion and incoherence, large swathes of plot and back story swept aside in the tumult of adrenaline, requiring you to take notes to follow the myriad agendas, who’s betrayed who, who’s fighting with/for whom and why, who’s on which ship and even who’s still dead.

All climaxing in a furious explosion of cannon ball batteries and swashbuckling with all manner of explanations and plot resolutions tumbling over each other to find space and be heard above the din.

And if you thought the last film’s soundtrack was overwrought and bombastic, this is like sticking your head inside a kettle drum for almost three hours while someone beats it with a hammer.

With a reluctant Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) and his Flying Dutchman now under the control of the East India Company’s Lord Beckett (Tom Hollander, wonderfully loathsome), the age of piracy is in danger of coming to an end.

The only way to save it is for Will (Orlando Bloom), Elizabeth (Keira Knightley) and resurrected unlikely ally Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) to rescue Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) from Davy Jones’ Locker and convene the Nine Pirate Lords of the Brethren Court so they can liberate sea-goddess Calypso from her human form (no you didn’t miss this last time, it’s a whole new plot strand to do with jealous lovers), and band together to resist Jones and Beckett’s armada.

Oh yes, they also have to join forces with devious Oriental pirate Sao Feng (Chow Yun-Fat, charismatic but absent for inexcusable stretches) who may be after a different prize altogether.

On top of all this, Will has his own motivations involving his barnacle encrusted father (Stellan Skarsgaard) who’s been cursed to serve among the Dutchman’s crew and can only be freed if someone pierces Jones’ heart (under lock and key in a chest, you’ll recall) and thereby take his place as the ship’s captain. Or something like that. Indeed, when a character asks "do you think he plans it out or makes it up as he goes along", you'd be forgiven for thinking they were referring to director Gore Verbinski and the fact filming began before there was a completed script.

However, opening with a grisly parade of hangings, it’s much darker and more macabre in tone, at times incredibly cynical about the machinations of the human heart.

It’s also far more visually inventive, strikingly so in the wildly surreal Davy Jones’ Locker sequences where, marooned in a personal hell with the Black Pearl beached on a seawater free desert, Jack’s hallucinating multiple versions of himself (including miniature ones at each shoulder) and stones are revealed to be scuttling crabs. Quite why Jack has the same hallucinations when he’s no longer in the Locker is never clear.

But the Orpheus style quest into this piratical Underworld is loaded with metaphysical and existential resonance as well as physical dangers and, what with a duel atop the rigging, blistering cannonades, frenzied brutal swordfights, cold-blooded shootings, and even a bout of matrimonials in the middle of a bloodbath, you can’t accuse Verbinski of not delivering the thrills.

Nighy is again excellent, bringing deep conflicted emotions (and surprising sympathy) to his tentacle faced villain while Rush chews the scenery with gleeful relish. The increasingly stiff Bloom’s no more flexible than last time round, but, cutlass in hand, Knightley is positively transformed, taking full command of the screen with a dynamic performance.

Depp, of course, is as marvellously droll as ever with his bemused mannerisms and slurred one liners, but it’s hard to avoid feeling that Jack Sparrow has become the film’s comic relief and that, in many ways, it wouldn’t suffer all that greatly were the character not there. Which, of course, given the unexpected twist of an ending, may be a pointer as to where a spin-off series might go from here if certain cast members can be talked round.

Exhilarating and overblown in equal measure, it ultimately delivers what you’ve paid for and its unlikely fans will leave feeling disappointed. Exhausted is another matter.

And yes, Keith Richards’ cameo as Sparrow Snr is a knowingly sly treat, includes the film’s best gag, and by the look of it saved a bit on the make-up budget too.

• FAST FOOD NATION * * *
  Cert 15, 113 mins

You may recognise the title as Eric Schlosser's 2001 non-fiction bestseller about America's fast food industry with its expose of what actually goes into the burgers you eat and corporate exploitation of cheap labour and immigrant workers. Inevitably, when it hit the bestseller lists Schlosser was approached by several filmmakers looking to turn it into a documentary.

However, at the time no documentary had ever been a released on the big screen and Schlosser wasn't confident his book would make it to television without being compromised by commercial concerns.

He said, no. But then he met Richard Linklater, the writer-director of Slacker, Before Sunrise/Sunset and School of Rock, who suggested turning it into a proper movie. So, the pair of them got together to write a fictionalised screenplay, much in the manner of a John Sayles film, that would address the book's issues and revelations, but couched in dramatic terms.

Thus, you get Greg Kinnear as Don, an eager to please marketing executive for fast food chain Mickey's. They're enjoying unprecedented success with their new product, The Big One, but this could be wrecked by as yet unpublished findings about cow manure in their burgers. So, he's sent to Colorado to quietly investigate the meat packing firm involved, getting some straight talking from a local rancher (Kris Kristofferson) and the company middle man (a showboating cameo by Bruce Willis) about what goes down, not rocking the boat and looking after personal job security.

Two further interconnected narrative strands emerge. Amber (Ashley Johnson) works at the local branch of Mickey's with a couple of gozo teenage boys and lives with her single parent mom (Patricia Arquette). She doesn't think twice about fast food politics until her uncle (Ethan Hawke) comes to stay and opens her eyes to her complicity. Joining a bunch of armchair activists (Avril Lavigne among them), they decide to stop talking and do something radical. Like letting a field of cows go free. Of course, they haven't reckoned on bovine stupidity.

Meanwhile, the third storyline involves including Sylvia (Sandino Moreno), sister Coco and husband Raul, three illegal Mexican immigrants, smuggled across the border by Benny (Luis Guzman) and now working at the plant doing the dirtier jobs white folk won't touch. They are under the supervision of Mike (Bobby Cannavale), a sexual predator who makes the most of the women's need to hold down a job and not complain about their treatment.

Solidly acted and sharply scripted throughout, there will be tragedy, there will be humour and there will be a downbeat but all too realistic ending that doesn't see corrupt corporations brought to their knees by some shining crusader for justice and the common cause.

Because that's what big business is about and because while we are what we eat, few of us will bother to check the ingredients if it's cheap and brightly packaged. Though the scenes on the killing floor might put you off buying that burger for a day or so.

• LIGHTS IN THE DUSK * * *
  Cert PG, 80 mins, subtitled

Anyone who's followed the work of Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismaki will know what to expect by now. Mordant humour, deadpan performances and a generally gloomy outlook on life.

And there's no change here for what, following Drifting Clouds and The Man Without A Past, is the final instalment of his self-styled Loser Trilogy. Indeed, if anything it's actually more depressing than its predecessors.

Living alone in a factory basement, friendless, shunned and taunted by his colleagues,

Koistinen is a night shift security guard at a luxury Helsinki shopping centre. The only person to show any kindness is Aila who runs a nearby hot-dog stand. But he ignores her. He dreams of setting up his own security firm, but his application for a loan is literally laughed out of the bank.

Then he meets Mirja, an attractive blonde who comes on to him at a restaurant and, to his surprise, seems romantically attracted to him. They date. Life's looking up.

Until he finds himself set up as the fall guy in a jewellery robbery, Mirja in reality being the girlfriend of a corrupt businessman who's in cahoots with Russian gangsters.

However, so used to misery and disappointment almost to the point of masochism, Koistinen doesn't protest his fate, says nothing about her and simply accepts his prison term.

He serves his sentence, is released to find he has no job and no home. He gets work washing dishes, which is when he bumps into Mirja, this time with her boyfriend. That doesn't end well either.

Relentless in its morose vision of an anonymous, grey, soulless, and manipulative city, it would be a grim watch were it not for the warmth of the soundtrack, embracing Italian opera, rock and tango music.

It all hints at some glimmer of emotion and, eventually guides the narrative to a final, tentative image of redemptive hope borrowed, in knowing homage, from Robert Bresson.