Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge review: CGI extravaganza lacking spark

Johnny Depp's familiar routine can't save the fifth Pirates instalment

Remember the first Pirates of the Caribbean? There was so much to enjoy; a rip-roaring pirate adventure featuring a straight-forward story and loveable, fresh characters.

With the fifth instalment — Salazar’s Revenge (or Dead Men Tell No Tales) — Johnny Depp’s swashbuckling Jack Sparrow returns, once again sailing the seven ocean, chasing booty, and drinking rum. Nothing's changed. As a result, this quasi-reboot-retcon, which basically ignores the events of On Stranger Tides, retells an all-too-familiar story, just with new characters and improved CGI.

Fittingly, the film kickstarts with a hugely nostalgic prologue. The new young male lead Henry (played by Brenton Thwaites) has managed to locate his father, a returning Orlando Bloom as Will Turner, who is still trapped upon the Flying Dutchmen. Henry has travelled far to explain that, by finding the Trident of Poseidon, Davy Jones’s curse can be broken.

Knowing of Will’s antics with the famous Jack Sparrow, Henry manages to locate the iconic pirate, who is imprisoned after a fun drunken set-piece featuring a failed bank robbery and some familiar faces. Also locked away is Kaya Scodelario’s Carina Smyth (AKA the franchise’s new Keira Knightly), a feisty astronomer who most men believe is a witch because of her intellect. Thankfully, Sparrow’s pretty good at escaping the British, the trio eventually breaking out and embarking on their adventure to find the Trident.

Of course, things aren’t that simple. The titular Captain Salazar — played by a heavily CGI’d Javier Bardem — seeks revenge on Sparrow, the pair sharing a turbulent history explained through extensive flashbacks (featuring an awkward CGI young Johnny Depp).

Salazar’s scary but also rather awkward, as Bardem’s characters often are, the actor giving the villain some weight through a hefty performance. However, due to the growing number of story threads, the added inclusion of Geoffrey Rush’s Barbossa, plus an empty love story, Salazar’s storyline is somewhat lost; a disappointment considering the franchise’s history of good villains.

Without a good foil, Sparrow — once again a unwilling role modal with a big heart — breezes through this adventure, cracking jokes that feel very familiar. The same can be said about the visuals, Norwegian duo Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg taking many cues from the previous films.

As you would expect from a movie with a $230 million budget, the CGI is wholly impressive (particularly Salazar’s ship that creeps along the ocean as a haunted carcass) but ends up dominating the final set-piece, taking away the threat as the screen becomes overwhelmed by effects.

Unfortunately, like Salazar’s ship, the fifth Pirates feels a little empty, haunted by the spectre of what came before. There are fun, inconsequential moments but nothing particularly memorable, the film running out of steam midway through as the aforementioned flashbacks take over.

Poor chemistry between Thwaites and Scodelario also dampens the affair, leaving Depp with too much to do. Perhaps, if Salazar’s Revenge was our first time meeting Jack Sparrow — or perhaps if Disney had left the franchise alone for another 30 years, like Star Wars (forget those dreaded prequels) — the film would have felt fresh. As it stands, Salazar’s Revenge lacks the spark that made the original 2003 flick so beloved.