MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD (2003)  **1/2

Reviewed 11/14/03

Yeah, the title comes from the books, but can’t you cut it down a bit? Isn’t that a bit pretentious for a high seas adventure tale? Anyways, MASTER AND COMMANDER opens beautifully with a confrontation between the Brit H.M.S. Surprise (yeah, I think it’s a stupid name too) and the superior French Acheron. Not since STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN has frigate warfare been so dramatic, but then up until this year’s PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, the genre has been pretty much on life support. Epics like MASTER AND COMMANDER and the forthcoming TROY are making a comeback thanks to advances in computer graphics bringing down the costs of shooting at sea or having to hire ten thousand extras.

So the story is Captain Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) trying to knock the faster, more heavily armed Acheron out of commission in order to hinder Napoleonic empire building in the larger scheme of things. It’s put together as a series of vignettes between battles – the crew sings, the Captain and Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany), the ship’s doctor and naturalist (not the nude kind) play Mozart’s 3^rd Violin Concerto together, they get hit by a storm, they get hit by a drought, superstition sets in, they hunt for exotic animals on the Galapagos Islands, and one crew member learns shooting at birds on a boat isn’t a good idea. Whenever the hardships start bitch slapping him, Aubrey has conversations with his voice of conscience, Maturin, who is both McCoy and Spock to his Kirk.

This is the kind of thing only Hollywood with its enormous production values can pull off in all its lushness, and veteran director Peter Weir (also producer and co-writer) does a more than sufficient job at making this production look utterly professional. There are no complaints in the acting department, and there’s a gorgeous soundtrack of classical music from the aforementioned Mozart to Corelli to Bach. It even hits its notes of humor as well as the horrors of war right on target. Still, the whole thing has a calculated dullness to it that prevents it from coming to full-fledged life. There are a few scenes invoking complex emotions, particularly one in which Maturin has to operate on himself, but there’s no emotional through-line other than Aubrey and Maturin’s friendship. Young, blond Max Pirkis is a little scene-stealer as amputee Midshipman Blakeney, and he’s as close as one gets to the otherwise distant characters.  The spectacle is there. Caring about it much isn’t.