fajrdrako | Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World....

I don't much like the Patrick O'Brien novels. I read four of them, always hoping to like them more, being alternately amused, annoyed, engaged and bored. I didn't have the heart to try a fifth. I could go on at length about why I didn't like them; and how I was surprised that I didn't like them, since by all accounts I should have liked them. Give me Ramage, Bolitho or Hornblower any day. I concede that O'Brien wrote well, sometimes very well - I just didn't enjoy the books much.

But I expected to like the movie Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World because everyone said it was good. (Hmm, come to think of it, everyone told me the books were good, too.) And it is good. I wish I had found it more emotionally engaging, but it was excellent in other ways.

Things I really, really liked:

The sense of history. It felt authentic. I really had the sense I was looking at 197 men living on a ship, making their own unique society, and what it entailed. Props, costumes, manners, everything was well put together to create the effect.

The cinematography.
Russell Crowe as Jack Aubrey. I sometimes liked the Aubrey of the books, but in the long run thought him caricatured, shallow, and not really very interesting. Crowe's Aubrey was interesting, and had just the right blend of passion for work and play that gave him depth and charm.

The characterization of various people: Blakeney particularly, but also Pullings, and some of the Able Seamen, and Killick. Fun to see Billy Boyd, and I wish his part had been more extensive.

The only actor and role I didn't like much was Paul Bettany as Dr. Stephen Maturin. As with Aubrey, I alternately liked him and didn't like him in the books, so it could have gone either way. As it turned out, I liked Maturin (the fictional character of the movie) a lot - his lines, his character, his role in the story - but I strongly disliked Paul Bettany's looks and style, and kept wishing there was someone else in the role. He made me cringe enough that it spoiled the part for me, and Maturin is an important part of the movie.

My favourite moment was when Aubrey let the Acheron go, to save Maturin's life by taking him to land to extract the bullet. Heartbreaking! And Aubrey's matter-of-fact attitude about it was perfect.