PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL
Sunday 17 August 2003
Stratford Picture House, London E15 VISIT

The pirate film, the staple of Saturday matinees of the 1940s, has not had a great track record recently, as anyone who saw the lamentable Cutthroat Island will recall. Furthermore, the inspiration for this film is a Disneyland ride, for crying out loud! But this is still one of the best pieces of escapist entertainment I have seen this year, largely due to the extraordinary turn by Johnny Depp as the unlucky pirate Captain Jack Sparrow. The greatest act of piracy in this film is the way Depp steals every scene from everyone else.

The story goes as follows. Geofrey Rush’s Captain Barbossa and the crew of the Black Pearl are seeking the last piece of Aztec gold that has cursed them to be trapped between life and death, unable to feel anything or to die. In the moonlight, they appear as rotting skeletons. The gold medallion hangs around the neck of Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightly from Bend It Like Beckham), the governor’s daughter, who is kidnapped during a raid on the English settlement and taken to the pirates’ island. Blacksmith Will Turner (Orlando Bloom, Legolas from Lord of the Rings), from whom she took the gold piece as a child, sets off with Jack Sparrow, the former captain of the Black Pearl, to rescue Elizabeth, stealing an English frigate and recruiting a ramshackle crew to sail her.

There are innumerable fight scenes and some memorable special effects (such as the cursed pirate crew walking along the sea floor to attack the governor’s ship). There is even some reasonably good acting, especially from Jack Davenport (from ‘This Life’) as a convincingly stiff upper-lipped Commodore Norrington, Turner’s rival for Elizabeth’s affections. But the show belongs to Depp, whose portrayal is the antithesis of that the swashbuckling pirate hero played by Errol Flynn. Jack Sparrow is camp, witty and more than slightly deranged, with the strangest English accent you will ever hear. It shouldn’t work but is does magnificently, which causes one obvious problem: when Depp is off the screen, you start to notice that the plot is confusing, characters are underwritten and at almost two and a half hours, it’s just too long! But as soon as Sparrow reappears, you are never sure exactly what Depp will do next as Sparrow minces across the screen.

For Depp’s performance if for nothing else, this is miles ahead of many of the summer’s supposed ‘big’ films. Well worth watching and I’m already looking forward to seeing it again when it’s out on DVD.

TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES
Monday 4 August 2003
Stratford Picture House, London E15 VISIT

OK, another delay in writing up my reviews, but it has been too hot to do anything, never mind be creative – or see anything in a cinema without air conditioning. Decided to see the latest instalment in the Terminator series, released some twelve years since the previous film, before the heat wave hit and with fewer expectations than for almost any other ‘blockbuster’ film of the summer. After all, Arnold Schwarzenegger is now 60 and apparently there is photographic proof that he now has love handles and, um, ‘man boobs’ (that’s what steroids will do to you kids). I realise Arnie needs the cash after a run of pretty awful box office no-hopers (Collateral Damage anyone?) but can he really still deliver the goods after all this time? Is it more the ‘Infirminator’ than the Terminator?

Thankfully the answer is, by and large, yes. At first, it sort of seems that whoever the director is (not James Cameron this time) is intent on playing it for laughs, with Arnie’s Terminator appearing, ready to to save John Connor yet again, and getting his trademark leathers from a male stripper at a hen party. But once this is out of the way, its straight into some particularly impressive action and, unlike many other films where you can see what’s computer generated, T3 seems refreshing old-fashioned in having stunts performed by real people, proper car chases and actual explosions.

The plot is still as daft as in T2: Judgement Day and Arnie still has very few lines, but the new ‘bad’ robot, the TX played by model Kristanna Loken, is not as impressive as Robert Patrick in the previous film. She doesn’t quite capture the blank ferocity that Patrick brought to the role (he obviously spent a lot more time watching Yul Brynner in Westworld), although she looks a lot better in a red leather jump-suit that Ben Affleck did in Daredevil. Nick Stahl does a reasonable job as Connor in his twenties but Claire Danes’ acting talents seem to have been wasted on a character that just screams a great deal.

This is a big action film and really needs to be seen at a cinema – I can’t see it being anyway near as good on DVD. However ‘T3’ is still an engaging and presumably final episode to the series. Whilst the door is very obviously left open for a further instalment, Arnie’s plans to become Governor of California might get in the way. And if he waits another decade he’ll be in his seventies.

I’m not sure that even the computer geniuses at Industrial Light and Magic can find a way to hide the love handles when he’s that old…