Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)

Directed by Peter Weir. Starring Russell Crowe, Paul Bettany, Robert Pugh, James D’Arcy, Lee Ingleby, Edward Woodall, Max Benitz, Chris Larkin, Max Pirkis, Billy Boyd, Richard McCabe, Bryan Dick, David Threlfall, George Innes. [PG-13]

Patrick O’Brian’s fictional Captain Aubrey (Crowe) of the Royal Navy is determined to pursue and destroy a French privateer (a “vastly heavier ship, out of [its] class”) in the southern Atlantic and Pacific during the Napoleonic Wars. Seaworthy saga, rich in physical detail, salty atmosphere, and crisp, brawny photography from Russell Boyd, presents Crowe’s captain as a dogged, honorable man of action, and Bettany’s surgeon as a naturalist with more erudite pursuits. Their friendship is a key component, even if it makes their philosophical human nature debates out to be a bowline knot when a sheet bend is more applicable, but the film is first and foremost a glimpse into the “sailing life” for members of the Royal Navy, and all the thorny hardships, dangers, drudgeries and superstitions it entails. As intelligently-crafted as it is meticulous, scripted by director Weir and John Collee, and bookended by a pair of visceral sea battles. In a more perfect world, this is the 2003 high-seas spectacle that spawned a franchise of further adventures instead of Pirates of the Caribbean (there just happens to be twenty Aubrey novels to pull from, after all). Oscar winner for its photography and sound editing, the only two craft categories in which the third Lord of the Rings picture failed to earn nods prior to its record-setting sweep.

85/100