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- No tagline
Summary Capsule
- English war vessel captain battles a French ship that's far stronger and faster. They need to fight; there's no women anywhere.
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Justin's Rating: 20 fathoms of ship-pounding excitement
Justin's Review: Two military ships battle for superiority, far from any support. Our hero's ship is crippled, and they limp away... but not toward home. A gutsy can-do spirit and a pinch of revenge give our good captain all the motivation he needs to continue the pursuit of the enemy vessel, cause, you know, he's boss. The two ships tangle a couple more times, the good guys gain the upper hand through some sly trickery, and all the while our captain gets an earful from his rational confidant and chief surgeon. The main theme focuses on where is the line between extreme duty and personal revenge, and when is it crossed.
While probably far from intentional, Master and Commander kept reminding me, time and again, of that great Star Trek flick. The similarities can probably be traced back to Star Trek's origins in the fiction of Horatio Hornblower, a sea captain with many of the same spunky qualities that Kirk possessed. So while Star Trek was a futuristic evolution of the military ship epics, Master and Commander seems to draw on the strengths of the best that the old Star Trek had to offer.
While Russell Crowe's face looks to stretch and shatter any time he puts on an expression other than "determined scowl", I liked him in M&C more than any other film he's done to date. It probably has to do with the environment and story more than the actor. I just needed a good seafaring battle flick at this point in my life, even if I didn't recognize it. It's a genre that's been abandoned for "bigger and better things", except that the bigger and better turned out to be "John Travolta as faux-Klingon and Sean Connery as ringleader to literature's most hokey legends." So we get in our Refreshing Wayback machine, and return to a simpler time when all the audience needed were smelly sailors lobbing 500-pound iron balls at each other. Sweet.
From the get-go, Master and Commander rams action directly in your face, keeping the pace hot and heavy for most of this flick. At the start, the H.S.S. Surprise is ironically ambushed by the very ship it was hunting. Brutally damaged, only Captain "It's a very respectable manly name, thank you" Aubry's sailing skills keep them alive to fight another day. To the dismay of his crew and best friend/surgeon Maturin (Paul Bettany) -- some of whom have newly acquired holes in their body -- Aubry announces that they'll keep after their better-armed prey instead of returning home. Only Aubry's superior Captainy School education and the crew's resilience give them any chance other than becoming shark chum. I, on the meanwhile, have jumped ship in my jet ski, and am scooting away from these rum-guzzling loonies as fast as I can.
In the framework of this chase between the Surprise and the Frenchie Man of War, the filmmakers present us a series of smaller episodes that give us a good flavor for life aboard a military vessel in these times. Young, pre-pubescent officers are trained to command the loyalty of men three times their age and weight class; delicate brain surgery is performed to the amusement of all; the Surprise picks up stranded Pippin (Billy Boyd) and makes him their new navigator; new islands are discovered; and the complex relationship between Aubry and Maturin is explored.
Really, I had a great time throughout this whole film. While Aubry never went the whole Kirk yards by shaking his fists and yelling "FRENCHIEEEEEEEEEE", he's an admirable character who rises to greatness as the opportunity calls. The atmosphere ranges from the cramped bowels of the ship during a storm to the relieving expanse of shore leave, while thousands of wonderful period details are included to really draw you into it all. The best parts -- the battles between the two vessels -- are displayed in roaring intensity, and there's nothing quite like the visceral impact of photon torpedoes, er, cannonballs punching through ships' hulls.
Major thumbs, toes, noses, and some other body parts that remain nameless under conditions of anonymity up. "The French say that revenge is a dish best served cold... and it is very cold... in the seaaaa."
Sue's Rating: Smellivision hasn't been invented yet. Praise be!
Sue's Review: Ah for the days without OSHA, child labor laws, radar, sonar, GPS or HMO's. When a man could leaf through Gray's Anatomy, have a stiff drink and call himself a doctor. When pre-adolescent boys had sextants and shoulder boards instead of PlayStation or skateboards. When men were men, kids were men, weevils were part of a well balanced breakfast, iguana-y type lizards swam the Galapagos and albatrosses were a really really poor choice for skeet practice. (Didn't those sailors ever hear of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”? Duh!)
But before I go… well, overboard, I want to impress upon you that this flick never made me want to haul out a cutlass and join in the fun. Just the thought of the projected body odor of 197 unwashed souls in a pre-deodorant era was more than enough to scuttle any romantic notion I might have harbored during the opening credits. Old Spice issues aside though, it really was an interesting glance into life on the sea, circa 1805 or thereabouts. Despite the prominent role of Russell “Take me out to the Academy Awards” Crowe, Master and Commander had somewhat less of a Hollywood taint than many an ocean-based tale. (Leo, get down from there. You look absolutely ridiculous.) Crowe’s not exactly my favorite actor, or person, but the character of Captain Aubrey fit him like a glove. A glove with extra padding around the middle and reinforced seams, but still a glove. In fact, there was good casting all around, although I didn’t recognize most of the shipboard ensemble. (Not necessarily a bad thing at all!)
I have to give the design and special effects people extra credit too. The finished product looked enough like the real deal to make me want to pop a Dramamine and chug a bottle of Sunny Delight™ to ward off placebo-effect scurvy.
Not that Hollywood didn't rear up its ugly, unimaginative head, mind you. An enemy bigger, stronger and faster than you are? The amiable aw-shucks secondary character destined for a terrible fate just because the audience likes him? The iron-willed character, the sensitive character and the character with deep psychological issues? An insurmountable task that, hey guys, just might be surmountable after all? The soul stirring "Do it for God / Country / the kids / laboratory animals / the Gipper / (insert inspirational item here)" speech? All present and accounted for, SAH! But that's fine and expected. I don't want to pick on this movie too much when it did such a fine job of telling its story and demonstrating just how miserable and complicated things must have been back in the day. The whole rigging sails thing is beyond amazing to someone who can just barely figure out the mechanics of a latch hook rug with Tigger on it.
If I have any regrets, it's that I didn't take the time to catch this one on the big screen. I bet those ocean scenes were probably impressive as all heck. On the other hand, a movie theater is a really bad place to exhibit a predisposition to seasickness, so maybe it's just as well.
 Less butch than Gladiator, but more firepower
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- Open-brain surgery is a spectator sport
- That knuckle-oriented salute had a certain gorilla-like quality to it.
- If ropes are hemp, and they’re burning lots of ropes… uhm…
- There’s nothing like kicking back and strumming on the ol’ cello.
- Broad-leaf parasol. Very trendy and makes an environmental statement too!
Is It Worth Staying Through End Credits?
No.
Unnecessary Background [some sources: History Channel]
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In this movie, we see many of the sailors were impressed (not in a "Wow! That's cool!" sort of way, but instead the forcible enrollment of recruits for military duty). After 1800, England restricted impressment mostly to naval service. The Napoleonic Wars increased English need for sea power and led to the impressment of a large number of deserters, criminals, and British subjects who had become naturalized Americans. (Until 1850, England did not recognize the right of a man to renounce his nationality.) Frequent interception of American ships (see Chesapeake) to impress American citizens was a major cause of the War of 1812. England generally abandoned such forcible measures after 1835.
Intermission! [some sources: IMDb]
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The only land-based portions of the film take place on the Galapagos Islands, and this became the first movie ever to shoot there.
This film is the conglomeration of two of Patrick O'Brian's seafaring novels, Master and Commander and The Far Side Of The World (hence the long title of the film). In the books, Aubry is actually fighting an American war vessel, but this was changed to a French vessel for the film.
The French frigate "Acheron" was modeled after the USS Constitution ("Old Ironsides"). The film crew spent quite a bit of time taking pictures and filming the Constitution. The images were then digitized to make the movie. The HMS Surprise was actually the HMS Rose, a reproduction tall ship originally based in Providence, Rhode Island. The film crew made several alterations to her design to match the 1802 design of the HMS Surprise. The Rose/Surprise is currently docked in San Diego, but in previous years the HMS Rose was available for tall ship cruises.
The French frigate "Acheron" is said to be a 44-gun frigate built in Boston by the Americans. Its unusual hull structure lends it greater strength and speed than the typical frigate. However, this type of hull design was at the time unique to American frigates and was a closely guarded national secret. It would not have been sold to a foreign nation (this was a necessary change when the decision was made to change the enemy from the Americans, as in the book).
Scarletdown sent in this comment, "The M&C --> Star Trek --> Hornblower relationship is not a coincidence. But additionally, Master and Commander wasn't modelled after Star Trek. After C.S. Forester passed away, a fellow named Patrick O'Brien was hired to write a seafaring series that was in the same vein as Forester's Hornblower books. This new series became Master and Commander. And that is why Master and Commander is so reminiscent of Hornblower."
Groovy Quotes
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Aubrey: Name a shrub after me. Something prickly and hard to eradicate.
Aubrey: Your bird, Stephen... it's flightless.
Maturin: Yes.
Aubrey: Well, then... it's not going anywhere.
Aubrey: Ah-ha! There's where you are wrong! Do you not know that in the service, one must always choose the lesser of two weevils?
Aubrey: England is under threat of invasion, and though we be on the far side of the world, this ship is our home. This ship is England.
Aubrey: To wives and sweethearts.
Officers: To wives and sweethearts.
Aubrey: May they never meet.
Aubrey: Do you want to see a guillotine in Piccadilly?
Crew: No!
Aubrey: Do you want to call that raggedy arse Bonaparte your king?
Crew: No!
Aubrey: Do you want your children to sing the Marseillaise?
Crew: NO!
Captain Aubrey: What a fascinating modern age we live in!
Seaman: Are those his brains, doctor?
Doctor: No. That’s just dried blood. Those are his brains.
Captain Aubrey: Don’t count your eggs before they’re in the pudding, Mister Calamy.
Captain Aubrey: I’d rather have them three sheets to the wind on occasion than a mutiny on my hands.
Discontented Seaman: I never met a dead man who’d bought me a drink
Old Seaman: I’ve never known a live one that you’d bought one for.
Captain Aubrey: You’ve come to the wrong shop for anarchy, brother.
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This review page was last updated on 4.23.04
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