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Master and Commander, the new "seafaring of olde" movie, starring Russell Crowe, is, as the reviews I've seen have pointed out, not a typical swashbuckler of Errol Flynn's days. And at almost 2 and 1/2 hours, it would probably be mind numbing if it were. Instead, it's more a character study of life at sea and playing cat and mouse, hunter and hunted, between warships.
One thing I will warn you about up front, as it surprised me: it's not a movie for the squeamish. They do not shy away from the realism of medicine in 1805, and it is not for the faint of heart! It is, however, also not excessively gory --- and that is one of the great strengths of the movie as a movie, and for the actors in question: the ability to make a couple of scenes as intense as they are without actually showing the operation in detail.
The movie is very well done, special effects every bit as good as modern technology allows, and yet I expected more. While a good movie, it's not a great movie, as I'd hoped and expected.
Perhaps, even in this lengthy of a movie, they attempted to tell too much of a story. We got a decent look at a lot of characters, but the primary focus of the story, well, there wasn't one. On the surface, the story is about two captains of warships chasing and hunting each other, much like many of the submarine movies about WWII, but as with those, the story is actually about the people on the one ship we're on.
The primary story of these character studies is about the captain and doctor, who are old friends, yet, while there is conflict between them, the relationship is not explored very deeply. Certainly not enough to justify a critical decision in the last quarter of the movie.
Still, there's a lot to like about the movie --- the stories are interesting, the view of ship life appears very realistic, these is tension and suspense, and there's even an amusing twist at the end. I give it a 7.
Posted by abatie at November 16, 2003 09:23 PM