Blu-ray Review: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow.

THE MOVIE: 2 3/4 stars out of 5

As I guess you can tell by my score, I was not thrilled with this film. I loved Curse of the Black Pearl which was a wonderfully engaging film with a masterful and truly inventive performance by Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow. Dead Man’s Chest (the sequel) unfortunately was too long and lacked the spark of the original. At World’s End (the third in the trilogy) is more of the same. When I saw it at the theater, I was wondering if it would ever end. Thankfully, it did. Johnny Depp is back as Captain Jack and gives another excellent performance as he is rescued by the gang from Davey Jones’ locker. Keira Knightly is as smashing as ever and the rather wooden Orlando Bloom returns as Will Turner. Also back from the dead is Geoffrey Bloom as Captain Barbosa who turns in another excellent performance, as Mr. Rush always seems to do, regardless of the role.

THE VIDEO: 4 3/5 stars out of 5

This is another excellent encode from the folks at Disney. Encoded using AVC and presented in its original aspect ratio of 2:35:1, At World’s End looks excellent. Although a lot of the film takes place in darkened environs, detail, especially shadow detail is excellent. Colors are very accurate as well and the film looks just as it did in the theater. In bright scenes, picture detail is excellent, with a crystal clear image. My only quibble with the picture quality is that some scenes look rather flat and lack the utter three dimensionality of the best looking high def films. All of the flat looking scenes are rather dark. Perhaps that is just a by product of the lighting conditions used. If all of the movie had the same pop and depth of the brighter scenes, this encode would rate 5 stars.

THE AUDIO: 5 stars out of 5

The folks at Disney have done it again with an awesome sound track. Simply put, this track kicks butt. Presented in uncompressed PCM at 48 Khz/24 bit, the audio on this disc is marvelous with a totally smooth and open sound that is a pleasure to listen to. Dialogue is clear and strong and well placed in the mix. The sound stage is totally immersive, placing you right in the middle of the action. Dynamics is excellent as well with thunderous bass. I wish all discs had audio that is one this level. There is nothing to complain about about the audio on this one. It is that good and about as good as it van get in your home theater and easily rates a perfect score. Well done guys.

IN CONCLUSION

While this disc boasts excellent video and truly exceptional audio, I would personally rate this one a rental due to the fact that this is not a very good film. However, It does boast demo material audio and you may very well find that the audio alone is worth a buy. The audio is that good.

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