The film itself often reverted to melodramatic style, with great character actors adopting static and unnatural attitudes, postures and gestures.Director Martin Scorsese was convinced by actor Robert De Niro, with whom he had madeMean Streets (1973),Taxi Driver (1976), andNew York, New York (1977), that he film had to be made, after he was given La Motta""s biography by De Niro in 1974.The tough, ruthless cop""s selfish, solitary pursuit of the white-hot apocalyptic object in a mysterious ""Pandora""s box"" ("the great whatzit") leads to nuclear catastrophe and annihilation during the explosive ending at a Malibu beach cottage - although there is no explicit mention of the words bomb, atomic, or thermo-nuclear in the nihilistic film.Salazar wanted to know the exact location of Jack Sparrow, but Barbossa only knew that Jack was "sailing for the Trident.