Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

John Chard

January 20, 2019

9/10

For England, for home, and for the prize! Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is directed by Peter Weir, it stars Russell Crowe as Jack Aubrey and Paul Bettany as Stephen Maturin. It is spliced from various novels in the Aubrey–Maturin series written by Patrick O'Brian. The film takes place during 1805, during the Napoleonic Wars and finds Captain Jack Aubrey and the crew of British frigate HMS Surprise ordered to intercept, destroy or take as a prize the French privateer Achero…

Peter McGinn

April 4, 2020

10/10

This is a rousing sea yarn with great camera work, but it also shows comraderie and relationships in a realistic way on board a British fighting ship. As happens sometimes but not always, I enjoyed this movie more than I liked the book it was based upon. O'Brian has written a lot of great sea tales, but this one confused me. I felt like checking to see if the pages were in the correct order. The story seems simplified in this adaptation. (Some may say that is not a good thing!) The first s…

r96sk

August 12, 2022

8/10

I enjoyed <em>'Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World'</em>. The early scenes are surprisingly (given the relatively close release dates) similar to fellow 2003 release <em>'Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl'</em>, with a hidden enemy ship spotted amid foggy conditions and then one person spots unexpected cannon fire and tells others to duck... there are even main characters named Jack (lead!) and Will! With those amusing (to me, given that POTC is my favourit…

GenerationofSwine

January 14, 2023

1/10

What you have here is Crowe still thinking that he's the greatest actor that ever lived. That all takes away the fun of a movie that had the potential to be a high seas epic like, say, Captain Blood. Peter Weir lets Crowe go crazy and you can almost taste the ego dripping out of the pours of every seen, so much so that he doesn't allow Paul Bettany to shine and he's a good actor in his own right, as is James D'Arcy and again, Crowe seems to want to hog all the acting glory there too. Ho…

CinemaSerf

September 3, 2023

7/10

This has shades of "Horatio Hornblower" to it, but is much grittier. Russell Crowe delivers a strong, convincing, portrayal of the doughty captain "Aubrey", in command of HMS "Surprise" and charged with tracking down a French privateer that is raiding the vital British whaling fleet during the Napoleonic wars. Coming up against an equally courageous and skilful French captain and engaging in a lethal game of cat and mouse, he must outmanoeuvre this cunning foe before he and his crew end up in Da…

This is superbly crafted entertainment, the kind of filmmaking that reminds you what cinema can do when every element is working in concert. Peter Weir has gone to extreme lengths to create a cinematic world that absorbs the viewer completely, achieving that rare suspension of disbelief where you forget you're watching a movie and simply inhabit the HMS Surprise alongside its crew. And he was quite successful here. It's more than impressive; it's immersive. The authenticity of the costumes an…