Film Review (s) - "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "Ocean's Thirteen"

(No, I didn't see these together, but I just realized now I forgot to critique "Ocean's" -- saw that one the other week)

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

I actually REALLY dug the first two films, so I left the theater this time utterly shocked at how bad this was. Honestly, I was really surprised how much the quality had dropped off by.

This was, essentially, two and a half hours of betrayals by the main characters. Tons of swerves. New allegiances that would be broken literally minutes later. And then more betrayals. None of it made much sense. This was the Vince Russo of Hollywood films.

Now... I now that "pirates turning on each other" was a key theme in the first two films. And that's fine, I don't have a problem with that. But in those cases, it was built up fairly well to the point where you'd say "Oh, wow, I can't believe he did that." In this installment, not so much.

At one point, I had fallen asleep (combination of being tired before I hit the theater, and complete boredom at how this was panning out) and awoke during a fairly anticipated scene -- I won't spoil it for anyone, I'll just say that it was the ONE thing I'd heard about this movie a good year ago. And even that development wasn't enough to get this film back on track. It was like "Oh, gee, another twist. What-ever."

I'd love to tell you here a little bit about what this movie was about, but damned if I know. Seriously! I could put little bits together, but most of it was over my head, plain and simple. That's fine if you're watching some fancy art-house film, but not for a fucking Disney movie, you know?

This is not to say that Johnny Depp wasn't great again in his role as Captain Jack. He was. The story just sucked ass, and did so for a good two and half hours.

I can't recommend avoiding this film enough, even if you DID like the first two. Honestly, I haven't seen a film in the theater this bad since probably "Envy" a couple of years ago. At least "Envy" wasn't a big-scale Hollywood blockbuster.


Ocean's Thirteen


Much like POTC, I enjoyed the first two installments of the Ocean's films. However, this one didn't tell a ridiculous story and kept fairly faithful to its predecessors.

The premise behind 13 is that financier Reuben (Elliot Gould) has been hospitalized after being screwed by rival Willie Bank (Al Pacino) and so Danny (George Clooney) and his gang exact revenge. The scheme isn't overly complicated (take note, POTC!) and you have to be impressed by how slickly everything comes together in the end.

I find it impressive that such a talented cast have stayed together (sans Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta-Jones this time) and Pacino mixes in nicely (that said, Ellen Barkin didn't do much for me as Bank's main crony). The only disadvantage is that some of the smaller characters don't get as much screen time this time around (Don Cheadle's Basher, for example), but it doesn't really take away that much from the presentation.

Was this the best film in the trilogy? Probably not - maybe it was even the weakest of the three, simply because you walked into this one knowing what Ocean's team is capable of pulling off. And yet, I'd take this any day over a certain other movie that I've covered off here....