ViewGuide

Created Jun 12, 2011 03:50AM PST • Edited Dec 11, 2019 06:25PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Really Great 4.5

   Ultimate naval warfare movie, thy name is Master and Commander. It’s got everything: broadside cannon battles, flogging and grogging, close observation of life aboard an early 19th Century warship, mast-top ocean views, even visits to the Galápagos Islands. Ahoy.

   Oh yeah, then there’s that Russell Crowe guy in one of his signature roles as Captain “Lucky Jack” Aubrey. Crowe and fellow Aussie Peter Weir deserve joint credit for a brilliant homage to Brittania’s Royal Navy. Brilliant in the British sense, that is.

   Master and Commander – a must see for war movie fans – also deserves to be on most sailors’ ViewLists. It’s flawed only by a too rich diet of pre-industrial naval warfare, a result of stuffing high points from across Patrick O’Brian’s 20 Aubrey-Maturin novels into one movie.

   Pity that they didn’t back off a bit and shoot for a sequel. I’d enlist to see it in a heartbeat.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   Russell Crowe’s daring and dashing Royal Navy Captain – “Lucky Jack” Aubrey – is one of this nonpareil actor’s signature roles. It presents his full package: traces of self-doubt amidst supreme competence, tremendous physicality, easy charm, a deep well of intelligence, and a commanding voice when he unsheathes it.

   Paul Bettany delivers perhaps his best role ever as the ship’s surgeon and Capt. Jack’s friend. He too displays a tremendously impressive range of miens, from ultra-grim stoicism to deep intellectual curiosity to playful musicality.

   Beyond the two stars, only a couple of the large supporting cast jump offscreen.

   • Max Pirkis as the noble and kind midshipman who’s the bravest patient ever. Why doesn’t this terrific actor work more? According to IMDb he’s only acted in this one movie and in HBO’s Rome, where he did a terrific job as the young Gaius Octavian.
   • Robert Pugh as the grizzled Master of the ship.

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Perfect 5.0

   None, but set to Perfect anyway to not ding the actors.

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

   None, but set to Great anyway to not ding the actors.

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

    An exceptional film, with perfect attention to the smallest detail, bravura action scenes on a grand scale, even rare footage of Galápagos tortoises and marine iguanas. The great Peter Weir can reasonably consider it his magnum opus.

    Notably, he made the ending a conscious transition to a sequel. Even the title, with “The Far Side of the World” tacked on the end, suggests the possibility of a sequel. Dare we hope?

11. Direction Perfect 5.0

    Weir the Master.

12. Play Great 4.0

    The story is ridiculously overstuffed with highlights, leading to a certain distancing after a while. That said, there are countless great lines, most of them wonderfully pithy. Capt. Jack Aubrey after being ambushed: “This is the second time he’s done this to me. There will not be a third.” Indeed.

    Co-writers Weir and John Collee certainly got maximum utility from Patrick O’Brian’s novels.

13. Music Perfect 5.0

    Love the violin and cello, especially the Corelli. Also liked when Crowe and Bettany lifted their instruments horizontally, picking the violin and cello like guitar and bass. Rock on dudes.

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0

    Amongst the visual wonders:

    • Galápagos tortoises
    • The minutiae of the ship, from footwear, to scrubbing the deck, to dozens of men swarming the rigging, to the countless sails. Wow.
    • The ship’s surgeon extracting his “butcher’s bill.” For one example, see the nearby image of a sailor having a hole drilled in his head, so-called Trepanation. Ouch.
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.3

    Brutality, thy definition is early 19th Century military surgery. Consider that the movie is set half a century before the American Civil War, a period when armament could easily blow off arms and legs but medicine could neither anesthetize a patient nor combat infections. Eye opening (or eye covering) to we moderns.

17. Sex Innocent 1.0

18. Violence Brutal 3.5

19. Rudeness Salty 2.5

21. Reality

    Surreal 2.5

    What does $150 million buy? A massive production that includes 60 stuntmen, artillery for sound effects by Loomis’ Battery of Michigan’s Light Artillery, recorded at the Michigan Army National Guard’s Camp Grayling, filming at the Galápagos Islands, hundreds of FX people, etc., etc., etc.

    The production Thank Yous are interesting in themselves, such as to the Royal College of Surgeons, the US Dept of Navy, Breguet Watches, the Farwin Foundation of the Galápagos Island, the USS Constitution, and the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, UK.

    As to the movie’s relationship to reality, it is set in 1805, some 30 years before Darwin visited the Galápagos. So its conceit is that fictional surgeon and sometime naturalist Stephen Maturin scooped the real world’s greatest naturalist. Unh-unh.

    1805 was also the year that Nelson defeated the French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar, ensuring that Britannia ruled the waves for the next hundred years. IOW, a good year for the Royal Navy is an ideal year for a movie besotted by it.

    Amongst the movie’s many reality liberties, how could a lone ship refit itself stem to stern while far from any supporting services? Only in the movies.

    Finally, loved the perfectly accurate model of the French ship, but refuse to suspend disbelief that a seaman could create such a perfect replica.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.6

23. Biological Surreal 2.5

24. Physical Surreal 2.5