Takers

Matt Dillon is apparently trying to become the king of the crappy heist movie.  Not even a calendar year after he starred in the armored car heist flick, Armored, he co-stars in Takers, which focuses on --- you guessed it --- an armored car heist.  Congrats, Dillon, in finding the least entertaining robbery scripts in Hollywood.

A group of friends --- Gordon (Idris Elba), John (Paul Walker), A.J. (Hayden Christensen), and brothers Jake (Michael Ealy) and Jesse (Chris Brown) --- work together once a year to pull off a daring bank robbery to finance their ridiculously high-rolling lifestyles.  Seriously, these guys have some really, really nice stuff.  After their most recent job, which was pulled off flawlessly and without firing a shot, the group is ready to lay low for a while before they get together and start planning their next heist.  That's when Ghost (Tip "T.I." Harris) shows up and makes everybody feel awkward; Ghost just got out of prison after serving time for getting caught during one of the crew's old robberies.  He never told the police anything about the others and they, in turn, kept his four million dollars safely invested.  One day out of prison, though, and Ghost has a high-risk, high-reward robbery lined up --- he has the delivery route for a pair of armored cars that are carrying upwards of twenty-five million dollars.  To put that in perspective, in the robbery that opens the film, they got away with about two million.  The plan is very risky, and the fact that Ghost has the plan so soon is suspicious, but the real issue is that this is a one-time offer, because the armored cars are doing that route in only five days.  What do they do?  Well, in the words of Gordon, "We're takers, gents. That's what we do for a living. We take."  That doesn't sound trite at all.

They have the whole "walk slowly away from the explosion" bit down pat.

Meanwhile, it turns out that the supposedly perfect robbery from the beginning of the movie was not entirely perfect.  The stereotypically obsessed with his job (and, therefore, not his daughter) Detective Welles (Matt Dillon) takes the robbery personally, for some reason.  Maybe it's because he likes a challenge, or maybe the easily identifiable salute given by Jesse (while masked) to the security camera rubbed him the wrong way.  Whatever the reason, Welles winds up following a string of highly coincidental and circumstantial evidence that leads him to the crew, as they plan the armored truck job.  Will he be able to out-think the thinkers on this one?

That's an interesting angle to take with any sort of robbery story.  Generally speaking, the stories are told from the perspective of the thief, so the audience naturally sympathizes with them and wants the bad guys to succeed, even though they are stealing.  Takers spends substantial amounts of time with Detective Welles and his partner as they try to crack the case.  Why?  My best guess would be a poor screenplay, but that's just a guess.

The acting in Takers is --- not surprisingly, given the cast --- not that great.  Idris Elba got to use his genuine London accent and he was given the most emotional depth in the film, but it's not enough to make his character seem smart or likable.  Paul Walker is actually the most likable character in the movie, if only because his character is pretty straightforward; Walker's acting skills are minimal, but he came off looking pretty solid here.  Michael Ealy 's character is given a few opportunities to differentiate himself from the others --- he is in love with Zoe Saldana's character --- but he doesn't do much with his chances.  Hayden Christensen didn't have to emote, so he was surprisingly not terrible here.  He did get to make some truly unfortunate faces during an action sequence, though.

Chris Brown and Tip "T.I." Harris did about as well as you might expect from professional musicians; their dialogue often sounded wooden and awkward, and they posed when not delivering their lines.  Brown provided a surprisingly entertaining parkour chase sequence, though, which certainly dwarfed his acting shortcomings.  Matt Dillon's character was pretty one-dimensional, even though we get a glimpse into his family life; he tries to be interesting, but his acting chops are not strong enough to overcome thin writing.  Jay Hernandez was similarly shallow as Dillon's partner that is obviously crooked; we find out his kid needs dialysis treatments and he has a fantastic houseon a cop's salary.  There are a handful of other recognizable actors in small roles --- Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Steve Harris, and the always slimy Johnathon Schaech --- but they are just there as minor role players, nothing spectacular about any of them.

Acting lesson 1: Paul, show me your "thinking" face.

Heist movies are not about the characters involved, usually.  The best movies in this genre are fun to watch because you get to see meticulously plan and then pull off some ridiculously convoluted and complicated robbery.  You don't want the robbers to get away because they are stealing to support their family or because they are going to fund a charity or anything else --- you root for the robbers because they are doing some cool stuff.  By splitting the focus of the story between the robbers and the police pursuing them, Takers complicates what should have been the easiest part of the story.  I'm not saying that you can't tell both sides of a cops-and-robbers tale, but you shouldn't unless you plan on actually developing your characters.  This movie has eight important characters, with recognizable actors filling in bit part roles; it's hard to tell who we're supposed to care about.  What do we learn about the three main characters?  Gordon has a sister, Detective Welles is an unintentionally crappy dad, Ghost is a petty jerk, and John...um... well, the most personal thing we learn about his character is that he enjoys poolside threesomes.  That's not enough information to actually care about any of those three, but it's tons more development than the rest of the cast gets.

The heist itself --- the armored car one --- is fairly interesting, but it's nowhere near as cool as it should be, either.  The planning stages are whirled through, with absolutely no level of difficulty.  When I finally saw what was being done, I was underwhelmed.  I was also confused.  If Ghost is potentially untrustworthy, why is he given the job with the least amount of risk and the highest probability of escape?  Whatever.  Despite the shaky hand-held camera to indicate that action was taking place, I was pretty bored by the time the heist attempt happened.  Luckily, that scene was followed by Chris Brown's extended (and mostly unnecessary) parkour sequence, which was the highlight of the film.

Takers spent a lot of time in development hell before finally coming out in the summer of 2010.  Director John Luessenhop took almost four years off the project to care for his ailing son, T.I. spent eight months in prison, and Chris Brown made the public relations mistake of beating the shit out of his girlfriend.  The movie was finally released, though, that we can all agree on.  It's just not very good.  Luessenhop doesn't develop the characters on-screen and every action sequence looks like it was filmed by someone having a seizure.  I will give credit that it appears that the actors did most of their own stunts, but they might have been more impressive if the camera had a tripod.  This isn't that bad of a movie, but it commits the greatest crime a robbery movie can make --- it's boring.

Star Trek (2009)

As the eleventh Star Trek movie, the plainly titled Star Trek (2009) had a lot to live up to.  The Star Trek universe is a rich tapestry of science fiction, with more races, worlds and continuity from the television shows and previous films than any other major Hollywood franchise.  Even the James Bond series, which has many more movies, is not even close to the depth of Star Trek.  It's too bad so many Star Trek movies suck.  To reboot the franchise, television producer/creator J.J. Abrams was recruited to direct.  Abrams isn't a trekkie, so he was up for anything, as long as it looked cool and had Kirk and Spock in it.  If I was a trekkie, I would have gotten a little nervous after hearing that.

If you're not familiar with the Star Trek series, don't worry.  There's plenty to learn, but very few important people actually care if you know it.  So, here are the basics.  In the future, humans have gone into space and met other intelligent species.  These friendly planets have formed a union, called the Federation.  The Federation's version of the Army is the Starfleet Academy; Starfleet protects Federation planets and explores the universe peacefully, seeking knowledge.  Aside from Humans, the most important Federation species are the Vulcans, a race of pointy-eared (but otherwise human-looking), emotionless, logical killjoys.  The opposite of the Vulcans are the Romulans (not part of the Federation), who look pretty much like Vulcans, but are mean, devious, and emotional.  Technically, you don't even need to know that much, but it helps a little when some good guys and bad guys both have pointy ears.

Fans in Romulan costumes: Can you smell the sex in the air?

The movie begins not with a familiar cast of characters, but a blast from the past.  While investigating some sort of electrical space storm, a Federation ship, the Kelvin (what, was Celcius taken?), is attacked by a Romulan ship, the Narada.  After his first mate (Clifton Collins Jr.) convinces the Starfleet commander (Faran Tahir) to visit the Romulan ship, the Romulan captain, Nero (Eric Bana) kills the Starfleet man.  Or, in other words, mean alien kills gullible human.  Back on the Kelvin, George Kirk (Chris Hemsworth) realizes how serious the situation is, and orders an evacuation of the ship, which includes his pregnant wife (Jennifer Morrison).  George knows that the Narada will pick off the evacuation shuttles without something to distract it, so he opts for a suicide mission and steers his ship into the Narada.  The rest of the crew survives, including little James Tiberius Kirk, who was born amidst all the trouble.  The Narada was never seen again.

Fast forward a couple decades, and James Kirk (Chris Pine) is now a headstrong cadet of the Starfleet Academy.  When he's not busy getting it on with green-skinned women, Kirk seems to fill his time by flirting/frustrating language specialist Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and doing his absolute best to royally irritate Starfleet's resident Vulcan, Spock (Zachary Quinto).  When a mysterious electrical space storm appears nearby the planet Vulcan, several Starfleet ships investigate; recognizing the electrical storm as being eerily similar to the one from his birthday, cadet Kirk convinces his ship's captain, Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood), to hold back a bit.  Smart boy.  The Narada appears and destroys all the ships it encounters, and appears intent on turning the planet Vulcan into a black hole.  What is the deal with the mysterious Narada?  Why is it attacking the Federation in such a strange manner?  How long until it changes its focus to a planet that actually matters, like Earth?  Did I say "turn the planet...into a black hole?"  How do you do that?  The answer to all those questions is "You'll see."

I wasn't sure how much I would enjoy Star Trek.  I've seen a couple of movies, mostly when I was younger, but the series has never captured my attention for long, aside from the excellent Wrath of Khan.  I'm not a big fan of J.J. Abrams' previous film work and was never a Lost fan, so the idea of rebooting the series with young, sexy actors seemed kind of like a creative last gasp to me.  In my defense, I'm not wrong.  The path the filmmakers took to do this, though, was interesting, entertaining, and surprisingly fun.

This Star Trek, unlike its predecessors, assumes you know only the basics about Star Trek, like the fact that it takes place in space.  Actually, this is a science fiction movie that assumes that you hate science fiction, and goes around that problem.  Gone are any highbrow parallels to modern society's excesses, or commentary on political ideas (for better or worse).  This isn't a movie where the plot is all that important; this is an action movie set in space, with all the explosions and punching that implies.  There's a few things for the core sci-fi fanatics out there, but this movie was made to entertain, pure and simple.

The key to this was the cast.  Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto were awesome as Kirk and Spock, respectively.  Since this movie is more or less centered around the two of them learning to work together, that is very important.  Pine comes across as brash, headstrong, and intelligent, someone just as likely to beat you in school as he is to get in a fight with you at a bar.  Quinto was surprisingly effective as the typically emotionless Spock, and his performance stands up against that of the original Spock, Leonard Nimoy (who has a small part in the film).  It's hard to play what is, essentially, a straight man to the rollicking man slut that is James Kirk and make it seem cool, but Quinto did it.  The rest of the supporting cast, while noteworthy, were basically bit parts.  Zoe Saldana probably had the meatiest supporting role, but her performance seemed a little forced; I just felt like her character wanted to end each line with "Man, I am a cool lady!" in an attempt to draw in more female viewers.  I have nothing against changing up the sausage fest that is your typical Star Trek movie, but I don't know if I Saldana has the acting chops to back that up.  Karl Urban assumed the mantle of Leonard "Bones" McCoy, doctor and second-guesser of Kirk and Spock; he was fine, but I thought he was imitating his predecessor too much.  Other recognizable actors filling established Star Trek roles include Simon Pegg (as Scottie), John Cho (Sulu), and Anton Yelchin (Chekov).  Pegg and Yelchin were kind of funny and cute, and Cho was inexplicably in a fight sequence where he didn't really do anything cool.  As for the bad guys, I can honestly say that I didn't recognize either Eric Bana or Clifton Collins Jr. in their makeup.  They weren't particularly stunning, but they were suitably evil.  There are more bit parts with name actors, like Chris Hemsworth, Jennifer Morrison, Winona Ryder, Rachel Nichols, Deep Roy, Victor Garber, and Tyler Perry, but the important thing amidst all these famous faces is that Kirk and Spock, played by two relatively unknown actors, were pretty great.

"If they're so awesome, how come they didn't inspire this fan art?" - William Shatner

That was the top-ranked Google image for the search terms "kirk and spock."  Fact.

J.J. Abrams direction was decent with the actors, but I was really impressed with how involved I was in the movie; when I saw Mission: Impossible III (also directed by Abrams), I was impressed with how frequently Tom Cruise has to sprint in his movies.  That's a nice step up for Abrams.  He's not a great storyteller, but he's smart enough to know that, if you speed by them, it is easy to ignore plot flaws.

When I was first watching this movie, a little question kept popping up in the back of my head: "How is this going to tie in with the rest of the movies?"  Yes, this movie is supposed to be a reboot, but it has all the same characters as the original series and they all act basically the same.  By making this into a "Star Trek: Year One," wasn't this movie effectively rebooting itself as the beginning of a prequel franchise?  As it turns out, none of that really mattered.  When it became apparent that time travel and alternate realities played a part in this movie, all my questions were answered with Leonard Nimoy smiling and saying, "Don't think about it.  You'll just end up with a nosebleed."  I usually don't have a problem with pseudo-science in sci-fi movies, but when it is actually the crux of the entire plot, I want it to make a little more sense.

That said, I still enjoyed this movie.  It was fun.  It broke the rule of every odd-numbered Star Trek being terrible.  And, most importantly, it brought back big-budget bombast to science fiction movies.  I think the last truly great sci-fi-action hybrid was the original Matrix, and this was a refreshing change from all the high-profile sci-fi flops in recent years.  And you know what?  I think the sequel to this movie should be pretty awesome, too.  I give this Star Trek reboot high praise, or as trekkies might say: to infinity and beyond!

The Losers

I came of age in the greatest time in film ever: the golden age of body count movies.  In those days (the late 80s-early 90s), the bad guys had evil oozing out of their pores, the good guys could kill hundreds of baddies with nary a scratch (Rambo II and III, I'm looking at you), and there always seemed to be a smart-ass remark after the good guys did something extra cool.  For about five years, these films reigned supreme, from (roughly) Die Hard to The Last Boy Scout (there are outliers to this statistical survey, but let's ignore them for the sake of argument right now).  These movies were always mostly awesome, and always (at least a little) stupid.  After a while, though, people wanted to see more realistic violence on the big screen, and these tributes to testosterone became quite rare in popular film.  That's why The Losers is such a breath of fresh (and familiar) air.  This is a movie that would have felt right at home in 1990.  The bad guy is pure evil, the good guys quip all day long, and there are a lot of dead bad guy underlings by the time this movie ends.

The Losers is a film about five elite Special Forces troops; Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is the man with the plan, Roque (Idris Elba)  is his knife-wielding right hand, Cougar (Oscar Jaenada) is the marksman, Pooch (Columbus Short) is the driver, and Jensen (Chris Evans) is the tech/communications guy.  The movie begins with the team on a relatively easy mission: they need to "paint" a target area for an air strike, basically giving the coordinates to the bombers.  After they give the order to strike, though, a group of children is brought in to the target area for the purpose of being drug mules.  The team tries and fails to cancel the air strike, so they rush in, kill a bunch of bad guys, and rescue the kids, narrowly avoiding the air strike.  When they reach their extraction point, the helicopter waiting for them has only room for the kids or the Losers (which is not a name I heard them referred to in the film, but whatever).  Clay lets the kids take the chopper.  Moments later, the helicopter is blown out of the sky.  Somebody wanted the Losers dead and twenty-five children died instead.  Oops.

After the bombing, the group lies low in Bolivia, trying to figure things out.  Eventually, Aisha (Zoe Saldana) finds them and offers Clay a shot at revenge.  Apparently, the man responsible for the helicopter attack was Max (Jason Patric), an omega-level CIA spook, the kind of guy that topples governments.  Obviously, going to the police won't do any good against such a foe.  The only solution is to kill Max.  For freedom.

No, it's not much of a plot.  That's okay, though.  This movie keeps the action coming early and often, and it's done very well.  There are explosions, sniper shots, car chases, shootouts, and you name it.  You want a body falling to its death from a building?  Puh-leaze.  Give me a real challenge.  Oh, you want a hand-to-hand fight between a man and woman in a fire that doubles as foreplay?  Your wish is granted!

The action would not be so entertaining if not for the cast.  Jason Patric steals the show as the ultra-evil Max.  I normally don't like Patric, but he's mwa-ha-ha evil here and knows it; he's a mass murdering bastard that never justifies himself and clearly likes what he does.  Most bad guys are just bad, but I always welcome the villains that you love to hate, and that is what Patric brings to the table as Max.   Chris Evans is the sarcastic guy he is in most of his movies, but he throws in a lot of uncomfortable comic awkwardness whenever women are involved.  It doesn't quite click, since he's kind of studly and it's hard to believe that his lack of game would prevent him from romantic success, but he still has his moments.  Oscar Jaenada doesn't say much, but his role is to be the quiet bad ass and he does his work well.  Holt McCallany is decent as Max's underling and their conversations make up some of the highlights of the film.  Jeffery Dean Morgan is a likable alpha male, but he's nothing special as Clay.  I like the guy and liked the character, but it's true.  Idris Elba, Zoe Saldana, and Columbus Short don't do anything special, but none of them are bad, either.

Director Sylvain White does a good job keeping this movie moving, whether it be with action sequences or well-executed dialogue scenes.  This is the first movie of his I've seen, but I appreciate the music video quality of his cinematography.  This movie is based on a comic book series of the same name, with one of the primary writers of the TV show Friday Night Lights (Peter Berg) and the writer of The Rundown (James Vanderbilt) handling the adaptation.  I'm not familiar with the comic, so I don't know how well it was written, but this screenplay is pretty dumb.  That's not a problem for me, but consider yourself warned.  Yeah, there are the typical tough guy one-liners sprinkled throughout, but that's not the problem.  The problem is that I'm pretty sure that there are entire pages in the script that call for characters to watch explosions, smile, take a few beats, and then kill some underlings.  Again, I'm okay with that.  It's dumb, not necessarily bad.  What is bad is the basis for this film's conflict; so Max wanted to kill the Losers because...they saved children from an air raid, killing the bad guys he wanted to blow up only moments before their corpses blew up?  That seems silly, at best.

Ultimately, The Losers is a likable action movie that is a lot like ones you've seen before.  The action is good and served often, the characters are shallow but are equipped with sarcasm, and there is a genuinely amusing evildoer.  Yes, the script is a little dumb, the characters are one-dimensional, and you never care what happens to any particular character.  This is a movie that knows what it is and never apologizes.  The only thing that keeps it from joining the elite action movies on Mt. Stupid Bloodfest is the lack of originality.  Since these characters are so shallow, there's really nothing about this movie that makes it memorable.  It's a good time, but not much more.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

I assume that, when Disney head Michael Eisner says his prayers before bedtime every night, he ends with "...and God bless Johnny Depp."  This movie should have been a huge, $150 million flop, but Depp's bizarre performance fueled it to ridiculous box office numbers and two sequels (so far).  It's based on an amusement park ride, a genre of movie that is barely existent for a reason; nobody wants to see Tilt-a-Whirl: The Movie.  Beyond all probability and expectations, though, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl was an unqualified success, grossing over $650 million worldwide.  But was it any good?

Despite the title, the Black Pearl had no curse.  The subtitle should have been PotC: Montezuma's Revenge, but I can see some negative connotations with that.  They could have at least used PotC: Screw You, Aztec Gold!  Whatever.  The main story of this film is unusual, because it doesn't necessarily require these particular lead characters.  I'll explain.  The main plot is about the crew of the pirate ship, the Black Pearl.  These men discovered a famous cache of Aztec gold, but learned too late that the gold was cursed; after they spent it, they lived as supernatural creatures, unable to feel pain or joy, only hunger.  The only way to remove the curse is to gather all their spent gold from around the globe and return it to its resting place, with the blood of everyone that took the gold.  Unfortunately, pirates aren't very trustworthy, so one of the crew mailed his son a gold piece (just before the others killed him), so the crew could never know peace.  And that's just back story!  The movie hasn't even started yet! 

The son, Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) grows up to be a blacksmith in Port Royal, Jamaica.  As a child, he thought he lost the cursed gold piece, but it was actually found by his dream woman, Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley).  I don't know why she held on to the piece for over a decade, but she did.  On the day she rediscovers the gold piece, she manages to fall in the ocean.  Clumsy wench.  Upon hitting the water, a pulse is sent out across the seas; apparently, the gold calls to the cursed pirates.  Unaware of this, Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), who has no ship or crew, rescues Elizabeth from drowning.  As a show of thanks on behalf of the Port Royal navy, Sparrow is arrested for piracy by Commodore Norrington (Jack Davenport).  Well, he is eventually arrested by Norrington.  In the meantime, Sparrow meets Turner, and they have a swordfight where the audience realizes that Will Turner is a boring person: "...and I practice [swordplay]...three hours a day...so if I meet a pirate...I can kill him!"  Will, that is a huge investment of time for a relatively unlikely goal.  Of course, he did meet a pirate, so I guess it was all worthwhile.  While Sparrow is in jail, Port Royal gets attacked by marauding pirates, who are after Elizabeth's gold piece.  Thinking that they mean to use her as a ransom object (her dad is the Governor of Port Royal), Elizabeth lies and tells the pirates that her last name is Turner.  Well, they're looking for a Turner with the gold piece to remove the curse, so they take her with them.  From there, Will frees Sparrow to rescue Elizabeth, they recruit their own crew of crazy pirates, and try to avoid being caught by Commodore Norrington or killed by the crew of the Black Pearl.

You see?  With that back story in place, it doesn't really matter who else is in the movie, as long as the Black Pearl's men find the last gold piece.  Yes, Will Turner's blood is needed to remove the curse, but Elizabeth and Jack Sparrow could have easily been somewhere else and the pirates would have still gone after Turner and the gold.  In my mind, that is the A plot, with Jack Sparrow's attempts to regain ownership of the Pearl as the B plot and Will and Elizabeth's love story as the C plot.  You wouldn't think it, but that's just how it is.

That unconventional plot structure combines with a novel genre mashing to make this a pretty unique film.  Pirate films have been pretty terrible for the last, oh, 70 years or so.  I can only think of one good movie in my lifetime with a pirate in it (The Princess Bride), and there was little to no piracy in that film.  To salvage that, the screenwriters (and there were a lot, so I'm not sure who came up with this idea) decided to make this a supernatural pirate movie.  Sure, you throw in a few skeletal undead pirates, and the whole movie starts to come together.  Honestly, the traditional "pirate" scenes, particularly the sword fighting scenes, are among the film's more ridiculous moments and are not particularly exciting.  Still, the use of humor and the good character work bolster the supernatural pirate premise enough to overcome those shortcomings.

Performance-wise, most of the cast is playing it pretty simple.  Orlando Bloom actually has to play it simple, since he has trouble expressing more than mild confusion in any movie.  Still, he plays the straightforward swashbuckling role well enough and works even better as a straight man for Johnny Depp.  Keira Knightley gets to practice her sassmouth in this film, making her character surprisingly feminist, given the story's setting.  Geoffrey Rush is great as the evil Captain Barbossa; it's not a complex character, but Rush clearly has a blast in the role and that makes him fun to watch.  Also worth noting is Kevin McNally as Jack Sparrow's friend, Gibbs.  He's not fantastic, but he blends comedy and piracy well.  The rest of the cast is less impressive, but nobody is terrible.  Jonathan Pryce and Jack Davenport are fine as the primary supporting non-pirates.  Lee Arenberg started out as a pretty menacing figure in his first scene, but he and Mackenzie Crook quickly became the comedy relief for the pirate scenes.  Zoe Saldana has a bit role, but she's still moderately annoying as the film's only female boat captain.

With those actors and characters, this would still be a pleasant movie, but it is Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow that makes all the difference.  A bizarre combination of sleazy femininity, outright drunkenness, and Keith Richards mannerisms, Jack Sparrow was entirely created by Depp.  How he got that past Disney's people, I don't know.  While Depp is the lead actor in the film, he functions as a supporting character.   He doesn't really spark the action, but reacts to situations.  That keeps the character fresh and appealing throughout; too much Jack Sparrow can be overwhelming, as the sequels can attest to.  When I first saw this movie, I laughed at almost everything Depp did on screen.  He wasn't cracking jokes, but his character is very busy; he is constantly constantly changing his expression, touching things, and swaying in the wind. While I wouldn't say this is Depp's best performance, I believe it is certainly his most memorable character and, as such, his Oscar nomination for this role was well deserved.

Depp delivers almost all the best lines in the movie, which helps his character's appeal.  It really doesn't get any better or simpler than Sparrow's reaction to when Will accuses him of cheating in their sword fight: "Uh, pirate."  While there are a lot of clever lines ("Clearly, you've never been to Singapore" is another), there are some pretty terrible script moments, too.  I understand that Elizabeth is all gung-ho and anti-damsel-in-distress, but the scene where Keira Knightley is having trouble fitting into a corset because it's too tight...?  That's some mighty fine acting, because I'm pretty sure she is sixty pounds soaking wet.  And Keira gets saddled with a lot of bad dialogue, too.  Her worst line of dialogue is also her last: "[Will Turner]'s not a blacksmith...he's a pirate!"  And everyone shakes their head and smiles, because they realize that Elizabeth is a very stupid girl.

The Curse of the Black Pearl turned out to be a pretty fun movie.  Yes, it's too long and director Gore Verbinski spends too much time on the supporting cast, but it manages to make pirate movies entertaining again.  Johnny Depp deserves most of the credit for that, but Geoffrey Rush does a great job as Depp's counterpart.  The story would be stronger if there was more linking these characters than serendipity, but it doesn't require much suspension of disbelief (until the sequels).  No, it's certainly not a flawless film, but what more do you want from a movie based on an amusement park ride?