Pirates: The Next Generation - Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales Is More Mediocre Than Awful.

The Good: Good performances, Kaya Scodelario is good, Effects are generally good
The Bad: Dull plot, Low on character development, Most of the humor falls flat, Thinly developed villain
The Basics: Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales is about what one expects from the franchise at this point, a tired callback to the prior entertaining films.


I had no drive to see Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. In fact, Johnny Depp is off the list, much like Mel Gibson, at this point, so I would have been content to never see the latest Pirates Of The Caribbean film. But, the cheapskate in me won out and when Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales was part of a double feature locally, I justified watching Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales as a freebie while paying for the other film. Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales generally tries to ignore Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (reviewed here!) and hearken back to Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End (reviewed here!) instead. As such, Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales is essentially the story of Henry Turner, Will Turner's son.

Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales is, as one might expect, a film filled with chases and the fairly unrelenting nature of the pace is contrasted occasionally by attempts at humor and flashbacks filled with exposition. But, at its core, Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales is a fantasy film that is Henry Turner's quest to rescue his father, played off the undead Captain Salazar hunting Jack Sparrow. The macguffin in this particular film is Poseidon's Trident and the quest for that is the excuse to have a new pirate chasing Jack Sparrow while Henry attempts to do his own thing.

As a child, Henry Turner rows out to sea and manages to locate the Flying Dutchman, home of his father, Will. Will urges Henry to give up his quest to rescue him, but advises him to enlist Jack Sparrow to help him. Nine years later, Henry is aboard a ship that is attacked by the undead Spanish Captain Salazar. Salazar asks Henry to deliver Sparrow a message, but Henry - as the lone survivor of the attack, accused of insubordination - is arrested by the British and taken to St. Martin. Jack Sparrow, as it happens, is on St. Martin, attempting to rob a bank by literally stealing the bank. Henry manages to slip away from his captors to the British jail, where he finds Carina Smyth. Carina is a scientist who is following her father's journal to a map that no man can read that will lead to Poseidon's Trident. Henry, Carina, and Sparrow escape execution and head for the seas on a quest to find the Trident Of Poseidon, which Henry believes will allow him to free Will from the Flying Dutchman because it will imbue Jack Sparrow with complete control over the seas.

With Jack Sparrow having given away his compass, Salazar and his ship are able to surface and they begin slaughtering various pirates, most of which are part of Barbossa's new fleet. When Salazar attacks Barbosa's main ship, Barbosa negotiates for his life. He begins a hunt for Jack Sparrow to save his own life (and in the hopes of getting his beloved ship, the Black Pearl, back from Sparrow). With Salazar hunting them, Barbosa and Sparrow search for the Trident Of Poseidon.

Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales feels like it is a pitch for future Pirates Of The Caribbean theme park rides the way it includes so many chase scenes. There's the stealing of the bank, the pirates and undead sharks on the island and, of course, the rescue of Sparrow, Smyth and Henry Turner; much of the movie feels like exactly what it is, a prolonged series of chases, as opposed to the protagonists actually hunting something.

The character relationships in Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales suggest that Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides did not resonate as strongly with fans of the franchise. The first three Pirates Of The Caribbean films featured Jack Sparrow, Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann and while Sparrow flirted with Swann, the movies kept putting Turner and Swann together as they built a romantic relationship. Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales tries to replicate that chemistry by having Henry Turner and Carina Smyth at the start of their relationship, butting heads but clearly headed in the direction of a relationship. The film is complicated by putting Barbosa into Smyth's backstory, but the bulk of the film is Henry and Carina's story.

The irony here is twofold; for a franchise built upon Johnny Depp's charisma, celebrity and sense of comic timing, Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales avoids keeping the focus on Depp's Captain Sparrow for too long. Second, for all the press for Salazar as the villain, his appearance in Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales acts as more of a secondary complication than the primary focus of the film. Salazar acts as a medium by which the film can present a bonanza of special effects.

To be fair, when it is lit in a way that the effects can actually be seen and appreciated, Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales looks amazing. The effects - while not linked to any sensible sense of physics - are visually impressive for their level of detail and creepiness.

The real winner in Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales is Kaya Scodelario. Scodelario follows Keira Knightly as a strong female character in the Pirates franchise who might appear at moments to be a damsel in distress, but is actually highly motivated and capable. Scodelario's Smyth is a scientist who is self-actualized and self-motivated, which allows her to play as headstrong, smart, articulate and fun for the bulk of Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.

Brenton Thwaites is well-cast as Will Turner's son, as he looks a lot like a young Orlando Bloom. Thwaites and Scodelario play off one another well and make Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales watchable, if not particularly good.

Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales moves to make Captain Sparrow the king of the seas, but it is other characters in the film who are resourceful and rise to heroic heights. As a result, odds are pretty good that Depp's Sparrow will easily be trumped by Amber Heard as the ruler of the seas when Justice League is released later this year. As it stands, Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales is a humorless continuation of the franchise where Jack Sparrow is minimized to lead to a potential continuation of the franchise that allows other characters to grow and take over when Depp no longer has the box office appeal the franchise needs to survive.

For other films currently in theaters, please check out my reviews of:
Wonder Woman
Baywatch
Alien: Covenant
Guardians Of The Galaxy, Volume 2

4/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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No, Bandidas Is Not A Latina Bound . . .

The Good: Generally good acting, Social messages
The Bad: Straightforward plot, Penelope Cruz, Characters are all "types"
The Basics: With Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz playing "types" in a Hispanosploitation buddy movie, the viewer is mildly entertained if one does not think of the implications.


Recently, on an episode of Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip (reviewed here!), one of the characters makes a comment on white people and a woman in the room looks offended and says, "I'm not white, I'm English!" Darius laughs at that and tells her, "I've got to use that." In a society obsessed with dividing people up by "ethnic groups," especially based on skin color, such distinctions as "white" vs. "English" seem funny or esoteric. Similarly, to most people who aren't of the ethnicity, the distinction between "Latino" and "Hispanic" is not immediately apparent. It's a whole silly way of identifying people. Ever consider just how silly grouping people by skin color is, as opposed to say hair color or eye color? It's all reductive, grouping individuals together by a single common trait. I begin with this because I do not wish to offend anyone with my use (possibly coining) of the term "hispanosploitation." Is Bandidas the harbinger of the hispanosploitation film?

When Mexican landowners are being killed by Americans to build a railroad for wealthy investors, two young women, Sara and Maria strike back. Sara, an elite, is the daughter of the bank's owner and is motivated by revenge when her father is killed. Maria, a commoner, is lost in a male-dominated society when her father is killed and she seizes the opportunity to rob banks to save Mexico from the invading Americans. Aided by a forensic scientist, Quentin, the pair robs banks and works to uncover the robbing of their land.

The term "guilty pleasure" is elitist, implying that a work being mostly "fun" is somehow worth less than a serious, presumably higher quality endeavor. Bandidas is not so much a potential guilty pleasure - for those who would feel guilt at watching Salma Hayek run around for an hour and a half - as it is a weird Hispanosploitation endeavor. In the 70s, Blacksploitation movies sprouted up with strong black protagonists who almost universally overcame the (white) Man to do good by the black community. Almost everything was framed in ethnic terms, production values often were lower giving the films a camp quality and the overwhelming social message from them ultimately became, "We can make crappy movies, too, but, hey! we're all the same." It's a good message. It's a questionable medium.

As a potential Hispanosploitation film, Bandidas has all the critical elements. The protagonists Maria and Sara embody the cultural heritage of the different strata of the culture they seek to represent. Maria represents the strong working class drive to preserve cultural heritage and overcome outside influence, Sara represents the one who plays within the dominant (or dominating) system until it hits her personally and she uses her knowledge of that system to overcome it with her newfound rebirth cultural identity. Ultimately, Maria and Sara are simply types, not actual characters.

And in that way, Bandidas plays it way too safe, even as a quasi-hispanosploitation film. In order to achieve their goals, Maria and Sara must rely on white men. Quentin, once convinced to aid their cause, essentially becomes the brains of the operation. In order to start robbing banks, the pair seeks out Jackson, who was a successful bank robber. The point here is that if Bandidas is a Hispanosploitation film, it's trapped within the framework it seeks to challenge. Maria and Sara do not succeed based on their own skills, cultural pride and Woman Power, they become a force because they are mentored by a man who teaches them and aided by a man who is superior to Sara. In short, Maria's skill is force and she is inferior to Jackson, Sara's skill is education and hers is inferior to Quentin. They need the men to succeed.

That's too bad, though I guess it shows that we're all the same. Or, more likely, it reinforces The Way Things Are (i.e. "stay in your place") as opposed to The Way Things Should Be. A far better example of this is Bound (review here!). In Bound, two strong women - relying only on one another - team up and take on the mob. If it were to be considered lesbosploitation (I think it's deeper than that), at least the heroines prove their worth based on their own merits. In Bandidas, that is not the case.

In fact, the more I write about this, the less I like the implications of the movie. Sure, it's a fun movie. I was expecting it to be completely campy and dumb. While watching it, though, it was easy to get into. If one is not thinking of the bigger picture societal messages involved, it's probably a much better film. If one thinks about how the Latino/Hispanic vote is being courted - especially by the Christian Coalition - Bandidas carries a much more insidious message, which one might suggest is "If you want power in our society, you need us to get it." That's a terrible message.

Truth be told, this movie is not as bad as Shark Tale (reviewed here!) (if you want racism, there's a great example!). So, I can understand why Salma Hayek (whose work I respect) took the job. Sara is a fairly strong female character. I always understand why Penelope Cruz takes work (I'm not a fan of her work), so that she is playing an archetype of ignorance doesn't so much bother me. Cruz continues her pattern - in movies I've seen her in - of flat-affect performing that is passionless and uninspired.

It is Steve Zahn who becomes enjoyable to watch in Bandidas. While Sara and Maria descend into terribly stereotypical catfighting, Zahn as Quentin becomes a voice of reason uniting the two sides. Zahn mixes reason and comic presentation to create a character that keeps the movie moving.

Salma Hayek gives a good performance, working well within the role written for her. She's always fun to watch. I enjoyed her more in Ask The Dust, but here she does an adequate job as well.

If this is the harbinger of a new cinematic movement, one hopes that those it is geared toward - primarily the Latino and Hispanic communities - will ask for more. Get real heroes who can overcome without depending on those they are building cultural identity to overcome. An occasionally fun, but thoroughly predictable movie, Bandidas is rainy Saturday material. If you want a serious, better alternative, Bound is it.

For other movies starring Penelope Cruz, check out my reviews of:
Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
G-Force
Volver
Vanilla Sky
All The Pretty Horses
Woman On Top

4.5/10

For other film reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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