On the couch

DVD REVIEW

Pirates of the  Caribbean: On Stranger Tides ****
Directed by: Rob Marshall
Starring: Johnny Depp, Penélope Cruz, Geoffrey Rush, Ian McShane

Kill the Irishman **
Directed by: Jonathan Hensleigh
Starring: Ray Stevenson, Christopher Walken, Val Kilmer, Vincent D’Onofrio

Sometimes a boxer can get knocked sensible after being knocked out. It’s not the sort of thing you’ll see every day, or even in once in a hundred fights but on those rarest of occasions a fighter can have their clock punched only to be snapped out of their upright slumber by a follow up punch or their head bouncing off the canvas.
The worst thing you can do under the circumstances is get back up and fight on. Your best move is to dust yourself off, count your blessings and walk away.
If only the people behind Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides would take such advice.
After the knockout slop that was At World’s End, the franchise returns to something approaching the form of the action-packed, charmfest of the original by stripping away a lot of the extraneous stories, and characters, that cluttered the last two instalments.
Front and centre, as always, is Captain Jack Sparrow, Johnny Depp’s wonderfully sly, smirking, constantly sozzled creation. One part Machiavelli, three parts Keith Richards and five parts rum, Captain Jack begins On Stranger Tides in London on the trail of a fake Sparrow and looking to get his pirating career back on track. A brief incarceration at his majesty’s pleasure and a chance meeting with a former paramour, Angelica (Penélope Cruz) and Jack finds himself in the thrall of Blackbeard (Ian McShane) racing against the forces of England and Spain in a search for the Fountain of Youth.
Unlike the previous three flicks where Sparrow’s story had to share time with the increasingly irritating Keira-Orlando love affair, On Stranger Tides is an all-Jack affair with the other characters and plotlines orbiting his little ball of crazy.
Other than Cruz and an entirely forgettable thread of a religious chap falling for a mermaid, the film puts its auld fellas to the fore with Geoffrey Rush returning as Captain Barbosa and clearly relishing the chance to cross swords with Depp (again) and McShane. The scenes any or all of them share are worth the price of admission alone.
All the other elements you’d expect are on show – swashbuckling, double-crossing, quips, mythical creatures and vast tracts of ocean – in other words a guaranteed good time.
On Stranger Tides marks an excellent and unexpected return to form for the Pirates series and, in an ideal world, the producers would take their minor triumph and walk away, punch drunk but still holding their heads high.
But, given there’s already over a billion dollars banked on the series’ back, it seems likely that the season is going to put up its dukes and box on for another few flicks, battered, bruised and increasingly braindead.
The presence of Vinnie Jones doing an “Oirish” accent in a movie could grow to be seen as a harbinger of the Apocalypse. At the very least it’s a sure sign of film in desperate danger of being bloody awful.
Fortunately for Kill the Irishman, Mr Jones’ presence is seldom felt and even more rarely heard. Unfortunately, however, there is enough hammy acting and dialogue to build a monument to the noble pig that could be visible from space.
Based on the true story of Irish American gangster Danny Greene and his violent, long-running feud with the Mafia in Cleveland, it stars Ray Stevenson as the titular Irishman and at least three tonnes of character actors known for playing members of fraternal Italian businessmen’s associations (Vincent D’Onofrio, Paul Sorvino and Christopher Walkin for example). The film charts the rise and fall of Greene as he works his way up in the organised crime world from a union organiser to one of the most dangerous figures in the Cleveland underworld.
Well shot with a clever use of archive news footage, Kill the Irishman has all the appearance of a quality little flick. It gets let down by the occasionally cringe-inducing script and performances that seem to lack any sort of volume control.
While many of the performances are, at times, compelling, Stevenson particularly, there are also far too many moments that could easily have been a Fry and Laurie sketch lampooning this sort of movie. Val Kilmer flitting in and out of the story’s background as a cop/mate of Greene’s is also a baffling addition to proceedings.
Far from the worst flick ever committed to celluloid, Kill the Irishman is more disappointing than bad. It might kill some time for you on a Sunday evening but consider yourself warned.