Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)

Genres

Adventure, Fantasy

Director

Gore Verbinski

Country

USA

Cast

Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Jack Davenport, Kevin McNally, Jonathan Pryce, Zoe Saldana, Lee Arenberg, Mackenzie Crook, Damian O'Hare, Treva Etienne, Michael Berry Jr., David Bailie, Martin Klebba, Isaac C. Singleton, Giles New, Angus Barnett, Greg Ellis, Ralph P. Martin, Lucinda Dryzek, Dylan Smith

Storyline

Blacksmith Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) teams up with pirate Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) to rescue Ms. Swann (Keira Knightley), the love of Will's life, kidnapped by Barbosa, a cursed pirate who believes the young woman's blood will free him from the curse. 

Opinion

I've always had a thing for pirates so you get my excitement when this film came out. It was over the moon, to say the least. And when I did finally watch it, I was happy because it was awesome. Actually, it was such an incredibly funny and delightful film it was impossible for me not to love it. Many years and views later my opinion about it hasn't changed a bit.

Although it is a bit more complex that one would expect, the plot it is what it is - in a few words it's all about rescuing people -, quite silly and more than a few times goes into the not-so-convincing supernatural zone but it's fun, engaging and exciting.

The characters are amazing, especially Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow. He is far from being a super human or a hero, he is just an eccentric, maybe a little crazy man who gave swashbuckler a whole new meaning. Depp brought him to life with so much excitement and everything he does is spot on, from gestures to facial expressions. It's sad though that he now plays Sparrow basically in all the movies he does. 

Anyway, then there are Orlando Bloom's Will Turner who isn't as brilliant as the previous character, but it's easy to root for him and Keira Knightley's Elizabeth Swan, a quite strong and memorable young woman. There are a bunch of other characters, some funny like the one-eyed pirate, and some more serious-ish like Geoffrey Rush's Barbossa, an evil and fearless pirate aka the bad guy brilliantly delivered by Rush.

The film has also plenty of humour and mystery to keep your interest until the end, there's some romance, if you are into that kind of thing, beautiful special effects, but most important there is a lot of sword-fighting, a lot of exciting sword-fighting. And Hans Zimmer's score is great.