Pirates Of  The Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge….That Sinking Feeling

Starring: Johnny Depp, Javier Bardem, Brenton Thwaites,

Directed by: Joachin Ronning& Espen  Sandberg

Rating: **(2 stars)

Welcome back….You’d  like to say to the whimsically tipsy Jack Sparrow. But the fifth instalment of  The Pirates Of Caribbean  is  abysmally short of breath. Huffing and puffing through  a gloriously alcove of gargantuan gags, none very amusing or inspiring, you crave for the pleasures of watching uncluttered humane stories  about Man Woman and Crisis.

This is a misbegotten franchise  , a misadventure on the high seas of epic proportions.

The fifth instalment of  Pirates…. lays it down thick. The narrative  provides  no reprieve  from the forced farcical sense of fury-unleashed. The protagonist , a pirate on a  rampage  on  the high seas remains true to his character: a sodden anti-hero brutishly vile and unlikeable.We first see Jack Sparrow(Depp)  locked in  a bank vault with a woman. The stunt that follows culminates in Sparrow tied down to guillotine alongside a  young woman accused of witchcraft.

The atmosphere is eclectic rather than electric. The thrills cry for a view of the valour that medieval heroism once promised.Alas, this  tawdry  film invents the most absurd pretexts for Johnny Depp to remain drunken and damaged beyond repair.

One  of the pleasures of watching this oceanic catastrophe in Hindi is to hear Arshad Warsi give voice to Jack Sparrow, the whimsical pirate with drinking issues who slurs his way  through some of the most politically incorrect remarks ever made by mankind. One of the gags is to call the film’s young spirited heroine, a working woman named Karina Smith(Kaya Scodelario) a ‘dhande wali’ which could mean a prostitute.

That’s right.You got  it. This film revels in iconoclastic  humour, none of it exceedingly humorous. A  torpidity paralyzes the film epic design rendering the amplified sequences of high-sea adventure  into bouts of burlesque which leave us cold and unmoved.

It’s sad to see the formidable Javier Bardem  here reduced to a ghost of his imposing self…literally. Jardem plays a  dead villain.Bardemand his pirate army of dead spirits are shot in a wave of stylish special effects suggesting a profound link between  morality and enigma. But the representation  of dead villainy barely moves beyond the sketchy and satirical.

The  film is tiresomely bloated in  plot. There are two  young people seeking a resting ground for their unfulfilled relationship with their parents. Not one  moment captures any genuine emotions. It is all like watching reflections of a towering architecture in the shimmering water…Nothing is  tangible or real enough to be celebrated as a franchise come of age. This one makes you wish the dead would remain that way. Afterlife can be awfully painful and  pretentious.