On the verge of being about something, the first ten minutes of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (hereafter Pirates 3) establish the uncomfortable, maybe even revolutionary, idea that the raping and pillaging heroes of this trilogy are akin to high seas terrorists disrupting the colonial aims of the corporation-turned-occupiers of the East India Trading Company. The filmmakers haven't forgotten that the American colonists were considered terrorists for their tactics against Her Majesty's finest; sad state of affairs when things like this and Spider-Man 3 take it upon themselves to state the obvious while a giant portion of America digs in their heels and plug their ears. We're losing the war on terror because our bellicose, Dirty Tricks government is confirming everything of which we've been accused. I'm tired of talking about it. But I was excited by how uncompromising a film Pirates 3 can be--how for all the pyrotechnics, it has in its heart a real mean streak. Children are hanged, various limbs are hacked off, there are skewerings galore--not to mention the emotional violence of the picture's father/son dynamics, or the ultimately melancholy (and perfect) resolution to its love subplot between complementary vanilla wafers Will (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth (Keira Knightley). There's enough good here, in fact, that it's a great pity that the picture is saddled with at least ninety minutes of wasted characters and deadening exposition in an endeavour that is finally as cynical as the quick reference to the Holocaust in a pile of pirate-sympathizer shoes.

For all the back-bending employed in giving this theme park attraction a narrative, Pirates 3 is best (and only ever good, really) when it's about following a treasure map around, random naval battles, swashbuckling, and melodrama. It'd be a lot better if it didn't try to be coherent, because so much time is spent futilely trying to wrestle this chaos into something with a beginning, middle, and end that the whole enterprise distends and bloats. The film is so obsessed with what isn't important that it convinces the audience to try to decipher its impenetrable--and useless--MacGuffins. What's truly troubling, though, is that if pirates are first equated with terrorists, then portrayed as heroes fearlessly championing a Braveheart-ian "Freedom!" (indeed, Captain Elizabeth delivers a William Wallace speech during the picture's most embarrassing sequence), the message is that terrorists are the defenders of the ideals set forth in our constitution.

It's hard to draw a different conclusion from a movie that has as its villains a colonial power interested in furthering its financial interests through broad endeavours that leave it stretched too thin to manage its conquered territories effectively. (Indeed, to stave off bankruptcy, in 1773 the British East India Company passed the Tea Act, which led to a certain Tea Party, which led to a...well, anyway.) As our heroic murderers, bandits, rapists, and other more non-literal nautical monsters band together to fight off the evil occupying force, it becomes difficult for me to rouse an honest tingle at their resolve. Fair to say that while I loathe George W., I like the idea of the Presidency and a representative democracy a great deal, and should you take Pirates 3 the way I suspect director Gore Verbinski and company want you to take it, it becomes the epitome of throwing the baby out with the Baath Party. Safe to say the film is thematically confused, so much so that it actually offends whenever it swings and misses.

Pirates 3 vacillates for three hours between unbearable density and ebullient fluff. As a summer entertainment it's unparalleled, the places where the budget was shoehorned in a good sight more obvious than in other similarly-expensive product. (I'd be lying if I said I didn't get a charge out of its extended finale revolving around a whirlpool and a whirlwind courtship.) Still, I'm not amused by Johnny Depp's performance anymore, his self-consciousness getting the better of him this third time at the plate, while the vaunted cameo by Keith Richards as Capt. Jack Sparrow's father mainly satisfies in the same way that any of it satisfies. He looks the part: haggard, devastated by good living, lavish in velvet drag. How does one waste Chow Yun-Fat as a scarred, terrifying-looking pirate, though? He's in good company, at least, joining a still-squandered Jonathan Pryce; Bill Nighy, somehow delivering an emotional performance from beneath a virtual ton of CGI prosthetics; and the great Stellan Skarsgård, who acts out the third of three lost-father dramas in one scene of resonance before being jettisoned to the sideshow.

All that talent, a 168-minute running time, and still the bulk of the downtime is dedicated to ersatz Rosencrantz & Guildenstern swabbies Pintel (Lee Arenberg) and Rigetti (Mackenzie Crook), stumbling around as we try to weigh the value of the grotesquerie and ugliness against empty double-crosses and mechanical twists. There are no character arcs, no rises and falls in its machinations to speak of: ending where it began, it's sick with The Matrix malady of starting with The One and ending with The One--the revelation was presented and paid off in the first chapter, leaving the last six hours of a would-be epic to tedious expository explanations and increasingly-desperate obfuscating pyrotechnics. Not saying too much to offer that it's leagues better than the second film, a missed opportunity instead of just another disaster. And so it goes.-Walter Chaw

The first two Pirates of the Caribbean pictures have become legendary demo material in the Blu-ray community for the sheer perfection they display on the format. (That said, The Curse of the Black Pearl has come under fire for being overmatted.) By virtue of the third film's more muted, ashen palette, At World's End boasts a less immediately striking transfer than its forebears, but the 2.35:1, 1080p image more or less falls in line with expectations, while the attendant 5.1 sound frankly exceeds them--even in its compressed, Dolby Digital (640 kbps) form. If the video has any shortcomings, they're localized in the second sequence featuring multiple Jacks (chapter 22, "Leverage"): the intensity of grain here suggests noise, something I'm apt to blame on the effects artists as much as I am anybody involved in the mastering of this BD. (Nowhere else does the compositing appear so rushed.) One look at those starscapes--which exhibit the kind of pinprick detail that's beyond the capabilities of standard DVD--and all is forgiven, anyway. Meanwhile, the audio engineers have definitely taken a wall-of-sound approach to the mix, though the sonic assault is by no means white noise. In other words, there is no cannon blast that isn't closely followed by the zigzagging of wood splinters and a highly directional chorus of screams and grunts. Disc 1 of this 2-disc set is sparsely supplemented by a 5-minute, HD blooper reel (specific to At World's End) that's interesting mainly for offering glimpses of footage before it was colour-timed. Cuing up on startup, various and sundry Buena Vista propaganda--including 1080p trailers for National Treasure: Book of Secrets, The Game Plan, Cars, and the previous Pirates of the Caribbean Blu-ray releases--rounds out the platter.

Unfortunately, the second disc refused to cooperate with my player, the Sony BDP-S300, despite the fact that I upgraded its firmware only recently. Every last featurette was reduced to the size of a postage stamp on my 46" monitor, and although the audio remained unaffected, I just couldn't hack it. This is the first Mouse House title I've had a problem with (at least, this problem with), and I suspect it's because the sophistication of BD-Java programming is outpacing that of the hardware itself. Indeed, I applaud the studios for staying on the cutting edge rather than pandering to the rear-view, which will hopefully decrease the number of double-dips early adopters suffer down the road. I only wish I didn't feel left out of some pretty promising extras (such as an interactive deconstruction of the maelstrom set-piece) that I plan to revisit as soon as I can.-Bill Chambers

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