Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides - Coming May 20

Director - Rob Marshall

Main Characters
Jack Sparrow - Johnny Depp
Angelica - Penélope Cruz
Barbossa - Geoffry Rush
Blackbeard - Ian McShane

I'm really looking forward to this fourth installment of the Pirates franchise. In Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, we catch up with Jack (Johnny Depp) in search of the fabled Fountain Of Youth. Oh Jack, does your ambition have no limits?

There has been some speculation as to how successful this movie will be, since Keira Knightly and Orlando Bloom will not appear this time. Here's how I see it. Bono IS U2, Phil Colins WAS Genesis and Sting WAS  The Police. Jack Sparrow IS Pirates of the Caribbean. As far as I'm concerned, as long as Jack Sparrow can find some new mayhem, you've got yourself a movie.

Rejoining the cast of this installment of Pirates of the Caribbean are Geoffry Rush as Captain Barbossa and Keith Richards as Captain Teague, also incidentally Jack's father.

Joining the cast are Ian McShane and Penélope Cruz, playing Blackbeard and his daughter Angelica, Jack's competition in the race to find the fountain of youth. Oh, and did we mention that Angelica is also an old flame of Jack's? That should make for some witty banter, don't you think?

My most recent exposure to Ian McShane was in the made-for-TV mini-series The Pillars of the Earth where he played the ambitious and devious Bishop Waleran. Besides having the perfect dark looks to play a character like Blackbeard, seeing his performance as the Bishop leaves me with little doubt that his performance will more than live up to the legendary tales of the fearsome Blackbeard.

Penélope Cruz as daughter to Blackbeard and maybe, maybe not love interest to Jack seems like a pretty safe choice. I think its going to be pretty hard to go wrong there.

Rob Marshall is the director of On Stranger Tides. As director of such titles as Memoirs of a Geisha, Chicago and Nine, for me its seems like a bit of a departure from his previous work, however that in no way causes me any concern as to whether this movie will be a huge blockbuster. That's because there is another name attached to this movie, as he has been to the previous three Pirates movies. Someone who I consider to be the King Midas of show business. I've yet to see a movie or TV show that had Jerry Bruckheimer's golden touch that I didn't thoroughly enjoy and wasn't more than comfortably successful. Even if I'm not sold on the story line, if I learn that Bruckheimer is involved, my mind is pretty much changed.