Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Single Disc Edition) [DVD] [2003]

Description

Based on the series of books by Patrick O'Brian and directed by Peter Weir ( Dead Poets Society, The Truman Show ), Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World follows the fate of the crew of the HMS Surprise - a British Naval ship on a frantic search for their adversary, the French Man O’ War Acheron during the Napoleonic war. Academy Award winner Russell Crowe ( Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind ) stars as Captain "Lucky" Jack Aubrey, renowned as a fighting captain in the British Navy. The charismatic Captain rouses the patriotism of the crew while wrestling with issues of honour, pride, duty, sacrifice and loyalty. With the true passion he holds for his vocation, he consistently employs ingenious tactics to engage his prey - a much larger and better-equipped French ship. After the French ship almost sinks them in an early battle, the ship’s surgeon and Aubrey’s closest friend Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany – The Heart of Me, A Knight’s Tale ) cautions him about letting revenge cloud his judgement. With the HMS Surprise badly damaged and much of his crew injured, Aubrey is torn between duty and friendship as he pursues a high-stakes chase across two oceans to intercept and capture his foe, refusing to accept defeat at the hands of the French at any cost. It’s a mission that can make his reputation – or destroy Lucky Jack and his crew. In the course of the Surprise’s epic journey, the crew travel the world – from the coast of Brazil to the storm-tossed waters of Cape Horn, south through ice and snow to the far side of the world and across to the remote shores of The Galapagos Islands. A true camaraderie develops between the men with the help of rum, music and the regaling of tall tales! Aside from some gripping battles and a storm sequence to rival anything seen on screen, Peter Weir's Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is as much about daily shipboard life during the Napoleonic era--especially the relationship between Captain Aubrey (Russell Crowe) and Doctor Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany)--as it is about spectacle. Aubrey is a powerful figure whose experience and strength of character commands unwavering trust and respect from his crew; Crowe seems in his element naturally enough. Bettany, though, is his match on screen as Aubrey's intellectual foil. Director Weir successfully translates their relationship from novel to screen by subtly weaving in their past history and leaving viewers--whether they've read Patrick O'Brian 's books or not--to do the thinking. Although the film's special effects ate up a huge budget they never overtake the drama, with careful characterisation and painstaking attention to historical accuracy taking centre stage. Matching action to detail, drama to humour and special effects to well-sketched characters, Master and Commander is a deeply satisfying big-screen experience, breathing a bracing gust of sea air into Hollywood megabuck filmmaking.-- Laura Bushell On the DVD: Master & Commander 's single-disc edition displays the full glories of the big screen experience, with Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS sound options that make the most of the resounding battle scenes as well as the small but vital details of creaking planks and lapping waves, while the sweeping CinemaScope (2.35:1) photography anamorphically formatted for 16:9 widescreen splendidly reproduces Peter Weir's painterly compositions. It's a tad disappointing, then, to note the lack of a director's commentary (surely such an insightful director as Weir would have plenty to say) and the excessive promotional material--cinema trailers and plugs for Fox DVDs-- that plays even before the main menu screen appears: anyone who has bought this title for repeat viewing deserves not to be subjected to such a broadside of soon-to-be-out-of-date advertising. -- Mark Walker Review: Excellent film - Film is full of tension, action, some funny moments and shows has tough life was on a ship. Review: Master and Commander - Peter Weir is one of the few directors who has, over the years, courted a mass audience whilst retaining artistic integrity. I first encountered his work whilst growing up in his own native Australia. "Picnic at Hanging Rock", while it was always rather frustrating for those who admire the scientific rationalism of a proper detective like Sherlock Holmes, nevertheless provided a showcase for the young director's eye for the beauty of the Australian bush. The timeless "Gallipoli", whilst its plot subscribed to a myth which has long since been disproven by historians, still remains one of the most poignant anti-war films ever made. After Weir's move to America, I still followed him, and was entranced by "Witness", his portrayal of a tough Philadelphia cop exiled by grim necessity in an Amish community, which combines all of the usual features of an action film with the full gamut of unanswered questions about the power of non-violence. Weir's latest movie has all the hallmarks of similar greatness. It has an excellent pedigree, having been inspired by the novels of Patrick O'Brian, a novelist with a genuine knowledge of Napoleonic history, and of natural history too. O'Brian was capable not only of writing superb novels; he also wrote an erudite and entertaining biography of Sir Joseph Banks, one of the most intelligent of the early European-Australian pioneers. When I first watched this movie, I expected to see something out of the ordinary. I was not to be disappointed. From the opening scene, in which the seamen slump listlessly inside their hammocks, the inventive camera angles captured life aboard a ship in the Napoleonic wars with an unerring eye for detail, from the grisly surgical scenes to the disastrous attempts to shoot an albatross. Much of it was gruesome in the extreme, and yet this realism was matched by a great beauty. Never has a sailing ship's rigging been captured by such an aesthetic eye, and in all weathers too, nor with such evocative music as a backdrop. It is possible for the viewer to spend the duration of this film feeling quite convinced that Captain Aubrey and the surgeon Maturin really are just at hand, although Maturin, perhaps, had rather more panache than he possessed in O'Brian's novels. Do not be put off by the reviews in newspapers such as the Guardian and the Independent, written as they are by would-be film-makers who presumably didn't make the grade, and feel miffed as a result. It is not true that the only conflict in the film is over whether Maturin will get to go birdwatching on the Galapagos Islands. It is far from mere birdwatching, after all; these are the same islands that gave birth to Darwin's "Origin of Species", and Maturin is about to encounter marine iguanas and flightless cormorants. And besides, there is always the small matter of a rather formidable French ship which Aubrey is determined to blow out of the water. I hate war films, but this one so engaged me that my heart leapt when the enemy ship's mainmast fell. For me, at least, this film succeeded where C.S. Forester's epics failed. Peter Weir has allowed only one compromise in his courtship of that mass market. Captain Aubrey's original target was an American ship, not a French one. It seems that, ever since Vietnam, at least, American audiences have become too used to being winners for them to accept an account, even a ficticious one, in which their would-be forbears end up blown to smithereens.