[rating=5]

As I said with my review of Fast 5, this isn’t a general rating. This is a rating within its genre. To put it in simple terms, if you liked the first film, you should like this one.

If you’ve not seen any of the preceding films, I guess you could watch it and still enjoy it. It doesn’t have too many dependencies. You won’t know any of the major films, and the compass will make no sense. Other than that, it’ll work. It doesn’t depend on the plot of any of the preceding films. Which is good, really. Thankfully, Sparrow’s , sorry, Captain Jack Sparrow’s ‘weirdness’ hasn’t been played up as much as it was in what I remember of the third film. He’s still a bit fey, but it’s not being played for laughs in the same way. Still, it’s a ham and cheese sandwich. But it works. The characters are meant to be larger than life, and that’s the way they’re being portrayed. McShane was really chewing the scenery. And it worked perfectly.

I saw it in 3D, at my local cinema. And to be fair to it, it was good. No headache, no bits that seemed out of focus. There were a few ‘stick something in your face’ moments, but they worked. Not like the yo-yo in Journey to the center of the earth. If you’ve seen the trailer, there’s a bit where a blade is stuck through a door. That’s in your face. Which is fine.