‘Dead Man’s Chest’ holds familiar treasures

Sparrow’s alliances, which involve a debt he owes to Davy, are full of surprises. So is Depp’s approach to the role, which includes more flouncing and foppishness than before. He’s often just on the edge of camp.

According to Depp, his performance is based on The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards. Others have recognized traces of Pepe Le Pew, Boy George, Bugs Bunny and Marlon Brando’s eccentric Fletcher Christian in the 1962 version of “Mutiny on the Bounty.” Depp’s approach to the role is astonishingly different from anything he’s done before on film.

More typically, he has played relatively straight characters. He usually watches his co-stars win Oscars or nominations (Martin Landau in “Ed Wood,” Leonardo DiCaprio in “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” Javier Bardem in “Before Night Falls”). His top-grossing movie before “Pirates” was “Sleepy Hollow,” which was more about art direction than acting.

Sparrow is a genuinely original recreation, yet there’s nothing selfish or grandstanding about Depp’s performance. He’s never more engaged than when he’s interacting with the other cast members: flirting with Knightley, dueling with Davenport and Bloom, debating with the cannibals, sharing a dreamy conversation with Skarsgard.

Pirate movies come in many forms. In the most popular ones, the pirates tend to play peripheral roles — the traitors who fail to transport the slaves in “Spartacus,” the barbarians who attack the Roman fleet in “Ben-Hur.” In this summer’s Spielberg/Zemeckis cartoon, “Monster House,” pirates turn up only on Halloween, when trick-or-treaters disguise themselves with skull-and-crossbones costumes.

The genius of the latest “Pirates of the Caribbean” may be that it’s as much a horror movie as it is a pirate movie, with a touch of Indiana Jones thrown in. A sword fight on a runaway water wheel could have been an episode in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” while a couple of the monsters might have stepped out of the “Star Wars” cantina. Clearly, everything but the kitchen sink is fair game.

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