You might need the help of a bottle of rum to make it through this overwrought, overly long, sanitized pirate saga.<br /><br />This film should have been and could have been exciting with some major tweaking. Bad casting was a large part of it's problem.<br /><br />For starters, I would have made Blackbeard the central male character of the film, and he would have had a romance with the heroine.<br /><br />I would have had Blackbeard played by a young, exciting actor - such as Naveen Andrews. Instead, Blackbeard, whose beard by the way, was rather odd looking, being so long and narrow, was played by Angus Macfadyen.<br /><br />Mr. Macfadyen is a middle-aged man who is fighting a middle-age spread and who looked as if he belonged in an recliner chair in front of a TV set far more than he belonged on a pirate ship.<br /><br />The male lead, Robert Maynard, was played by Mark Umbers. He was all right, but not handsome or exciting enough.<br /><br />And while I greatly admired the heroine, Charlotte's spunk (Jessica Chastain),she was no shrinking violet - the woman didn't hesitate to use a gun or a knife - she was so homely, she could have stopped a clock at midnight on a moonless night.<br /><br />There was scenery chewing aplenty, along with a lot of action on the high seas, and no doubt quite a bit of historical inaccuracy. Certainly more than a bit of unrealistic happenings.<br /><br />They go in search of Captain Kidd's treasure - find it - and then I'll be darned if they don't go in search of it again. That part was completely murky. Did Captain Kidd have more than one hidden treasure? Was the first one Captain Kidd's and the second one some other treasure? I don't know and I didn't even care enough to try to figure it out.<br /><br />4 stars out of 10.