Allo Poppit! (Pirates of the Caribbean - The Curse Of The Black Pearl (DVD))

Member Name: mariankelly

Product:	Pirates of the Caribbean - The Curse Of The Black Pearl (DVD)
Date:	24/01/05 (417 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Excellant casting, Great clothing/props/background /set, Very funny at times!

Disadvantages: None!

Hello Poppits! This is an in depth review of Pirates of the Caribbean, The Curse of the Black Pearl, staring Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly, among others. If you haven’t seen this film, and you don’t wish to know the ending, don’t read it! I will tell everything, so ‘ye be warned’ !! You can of course, skip to the last paragraph!

The story starts with a young Miss Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) on board a British ship, sailing from England to the Caribbean, singing an old Pirate song. On hearing this, a crew member tells her to stop, and her father appears, and tells him to leave her alone. Miss Swann still looks out to see, and sees a young boy floating on a raft. He is pulled aboard, and Miss Swann is told to look after him.

On further inspection, she sees that the young man is wearing a necklace of some sort, a medallion, with the face of a skull engraved in the gold. She takes it from him, and keeps it safely locked away in a drawer. We then see a ship in flames, and another, with black sails, flying through the seas. We learn that the boy is called Will Turner. The scene ends, and we see Miss Swann 8 years later. She awakes after dreaming of that day, the first meeting of Will, and the medallion. We see her take it from the drawer, and place it around her neck.

Her father comes in with a dress, and so she hides the medallion. Her fathers wish is that she marries a young commandant on the ship, someone who would be perfect for her. There is a service that Miss Swan must attend for the Navy, and so she prepares for that. We then get the first glimpse of the older, handsome Will Turner, played by Orlando Bloom, waiting in the hallway to see Miss Swans father. We can tell he is uncomfortable in such a grand setting, even managing to break the lights while he is there. We see him presenting a sword to Mr. Swann, which he praises highly, although the person he praises isn’t Turner, it’s the head blacksmith, Turner’s master, Mr. Brown.

When Miss Swan makes a grand entrance down a staircase, we can’t help but notice that Will is madly in love with her. He is always polite, and always calls her Miss Swann, never Elizabeth. And so she leaves for the service, with Will looking after her. After the service, she meets with the commandant, who proposes. Due to her tight corset, she faints at this time, and falls into the sea. As she hits the water, a type of ‘sonic boom’ comes from her medallion.

Just before this, we meet the great Captain Jack Sparrow, and don’t forget the ‘Captain’. He tries to steal one of the Navy’s elite ships, Interceptor, but after seeing Elizabeth fall, he dives in and saves her. Of course, he manages to heroically pull her to safety, only to be found out that he’s a pirate, from the markings on his arm. And so he escapes, running and hiding, of course, in the blacksmiths with the drunken, unconscious, Mr. Brown.

Next we see will Turner return to his workplace, and notices straight away that things are not as he left them. Sparrow gets revealed, and so a sword fight ensues, with great acting and swordsmanship from both Depp and Bloom here, mirroring each other’s steps to perfection. Turner works hard, and in the end, it’s the drunken Mr Brown who hits Sparrow over the head with his bottle, and eventually gets the praise. You can’t help but laugh when Bloom’s character rolls his eyes to the Heavens!

And so Sparrow is thrown into a cell. After the ‘Boom’ from the medallion, a mysterious pirate ship closes in on the town, the Black Pearl, full of it’s pirate crew. The pirates invade, kill and plunder searching for the medallion and it’s owner. Of course they catch up with Miss Swann, while Turner is throwing axes about very much a la Legolas. And so he sees as Swann gets captured, but she cries Parle, the old pirate pardon, where you must take the person to the leader without harm. And so the pirates take Swann to their leader, Captain Barbosa aboard the Black Pearl.

Meanwhile, after a quick sleep for Turner, well he got knocked out, he realised that only Sparrow can help. Sparrow is a pirate, so he is the only logical choice. After asking the commandant for help, he realised he must go it alone to save the love of his life. And so he springs Sparrow after he convinces him that the Black Pearl is moored in an island where no one can find it, but those who were there before, they begin their adventure.

And so the two daringly steal one of the ships, the Interceptor, with a great quote from the commandant ‘ That is without doubt the worst pirate I’ve ever seen’. After realising that Sparrow and Turner have disabled the rudder on their own ship, and so evading the capture, one member of the Navy pointed out ‘That’s got to be the best pirate I’ve ever seen’, and the man himself replying ‘So it would seem’.

And so Sparrow rallies up a crew of his own, people who were against the ‘Fools errand’ until they found out that they have in their possession something very important, BootStraps Bill Turners son, yes, you guessed it, Will Turner.

A pirates motto : Take what ya can, give nothin’ back.

Back to Capt. Barbosa on board the Black Pearl. Seems they found 882 Aztec Gold pieces, bought with blood money. They were Cortez’s, and he left a curse on the gold. Any mortal to remove a piece, will be punished for eternity. Of course, Barbosa and his crew found it, and were cursed, compelled by greed to spend it. The only way to end the curse? Collect and restore all the scattered pieces. Repay the blood spilt. Of course, Miss Swann told Barbosa her name was Miss Turner, and so he believed that he had BootStraps daughter.
She runs out onto the deck, and the moonlight reveals the skeletons of the crew manning the ship. That’s the curse, and she better start believing in ghost stories, because she’s in one!

And so Sparrow, Turner and their crew sail into the Island. Underwater shots, lots of sunken ships, sharks, the lot. Misty wisps around the land. Great scenery. Turner finds out from the crew that Sparrow was the captain of the Black Pearl, but there was a mutiny, and they marooned Sparrow alone and on an island, with a pistol with a single bullet. To kill himself.

Pirates code : Any man left behind, stays behind.

And so they enter the caves. Queue great shots of a massive treasure chest filled with Aztec gold. They cut Swanns hand for the blood, but yet the curse isn’t lifted. To save Swann, Turner knocks out Sparrow, and the two return to the ship. Turner realises that it’s him they need, the blood of his father, which flows through his veins. The medallion he was give, now returned from Swann to the rightful owner, was sent to him from his father. It’s the last piece of the 882.

The Black Pearl is catching up on them. Sparrow jumps from the BP to the other ship, and mad fighting ensues. Water floods into the other vessel, and Turner gets trapped below deck, with the water rising. The monkey finds the medallion, and Sparrow chases him back onto the PB. They recapture Swann, and Sparrow is also now on board, as the other ship blows up into pieces. Certain death for Turner. But no, he climbs up the ropes and threatens to kill himself, rendering the solution to the curse void. Swann walks the plank, with Sparrow next. Thrown off beside the island where he was once marooned.

‘That’s the second time I’ve had to watch that man sail away in my ship’. The Black Pearl, really is – FREEDOM.

And so Swann and Sparrow drink rum and be merry, Sparrow of course comes onto Swann but then blacks out. He awakes to massive fires burning, she’s burnt all the rum. This signals the Navy, in the HMS Dauntless, who picks them up, and she then agrees to marry the commodore.

Turner is locked away below deck, and speaks to the BP crew about his father. BootStraps had said that they all deserved to be cursed for leaving Sparrow marooned on the island and also for the mutiny, and so they strapped a cannon to BootStraps bootstraps, and pushed him overboard. It was only after that of course, they discovered that they needed his blood.

Next Sparrow barters with the Navy, and is allowed to go back into the Gold cave. He sees Turner hunched over the chest, about to have his throat cut. He makes a deal, which Barbosa can have a new Navy ship, and Sparrow would have the BP, with a cut to Barbosa from his loot. He gets the ghostly crew to leave the cave to overthrow the Navy, with a great decoy of two fellas in dresses?! And so the ghostly crew tries to overthrow the ship, Swann escapes out the window and down into a boat, and heads for the cave. Sparrow double-crosses Barbosa, with his army gone, and both himself and Turner do a great fighting sequence. Sparrow is stabbed, but he had stolen a coin so he himself became immortal. He staggered back into the moonlight and shown as his ghostly self, flipping the coin through his fingers.

The two captains continue their fight, with Turner also battling the undead. Swann rows into the cave, and the BP is shown sailing away with Sparrows old crew at the wheel. Swann and Turner band together to fight, as Sparrow throws the last coin to Turner, who slices his hand and blood falls on the coin, and is then thrown into the chest, as Sparrow uses his last bullet, on Barbosa. The curse is lifted, the ghostly crew become human, Barbosa is killed and the rest of the crew surrender.

The film then cuts to Sparrow on the gallows, about to be hung for a long list of reasons. Will Turner turns up, Musketeer style and tells Elizabeth that he loves her, and then pushes through the crowd. He throws his sword at the wood behind Sparrows feet just as the trap door falls, so he can stand up without being hung, while Turner battles the executioner. Turner and Sparrow heroically escape together, with mirrored flips and fighting techniques. They are now cornered, and Swann pushes her way through, and stands between Sparrow, Turner and the commodore. Great quotes from Sparrow, to Swann ‘It never would have worked out between us, sorry darling’, and to Turner ‘Nice hat’. We then see a parrot, one from the crew of Sparrows, and we see the Black Pearl veering around the corner of the island, to collect their captain.

The film ends with Swanns father asking Elizabeth if this is the path she’s chosen, referring to Turner. ‘After all, he is a blacksmith’. ‘No’, she says. ‘He’s a pirate’.

This was a great film. Excellent acting from all concerned, not only Depp, Bloom and Knightley, but all the other cast members. The music, by Klaus Belder, was excellent, I especially love the end credits one. The story was based on Walt Disney’s film, and was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. Penny Rose did an excellent job as the costume designer, and there was excellent bonus material on the DVD’s. Everything was done properly, right down to the tiny details, like clothes, weapons and ships of that era. The Interceptor, HMS Dauntless and the Black Pearl were excellent! Watch this film!!

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