Johnny Depp in Hell

I can say unequivocally what the best ten minutes on film is this year. Nothing will top Johnny Depp’s introduction to the Pirates of the Caribean, End of the World. It was beautifully done. At the end of the third movie Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow was killed and taken down to sailor’s hell, Davy Jones’ Locker, with his crew vowing to sail there and rescue him. Frankly, Pirates II wasn’t a very good movie. Pirates III starts off pretty weak, but once Johnny Depp shows up it picks up considerably. It still has its problems (the British officers are terrible), but it has moments of brilliance as well. The plot is very complex, and the various subplots run the gamut from farce to melodrama to romance to tragiccomedy to tragedy, and all of them well done. I even liked Keith Richards’ cameo.

But that ten minutes of Johnny Depp in hell were beautiful. It was a serious hell. It had to be a bit comical, since it was Captain Jack. And we knew he was about to be rescued, so there wasn’t a lot of tension. But the imagery was fantastic. It had elements inspired by both Salvador Dali and Jean Paul Sartre. I’m serious. Existential surrealism. I won’t say a word more about it because it was that good. It’s worth the price of admission and screaming kids all by itself. Check it out.