High-seas Epic With Crowe's Feat A Winner
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday November 6, 2003
The five years since The Truman Show have not dulled Australian director Peter Weir's masterful film-making skills.
Yesterday's first preview of Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World revealed it to be a rip-roaring seafaring epic with soul. Not only is it bound to be a highlight of the holiday film season, but it's likely to figure in the next Oscar calculations.
Playing the captain of a British naval ship battling the French in 1805, Russell Crowe turns in a rousing performance that puts television's boyish Hornblower in the shade.
The star of Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind brings a fiery intelligence to Captain Jack Aubrey, whose friendship with gentle doctor Stephen Maturin, played by Paul Bettany, is at the heart of Master and Commander.
One is a man of action who sees the world through a telescope, the other a reflective naturalist who sees it through a microscope.
While they share an interest in playing string music during quieter moments aboard HMS Surprise, the long pursuit of the French ship Acheron brings a clash of philosophies.
This pursuit takes them from the coast of Brazil around the Horn to the Galapagos Islands as ``Lucky Jack" Aubrey steers his ship through storms, doldrums and human dramas.
Based on a series of historical novels by Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander has been a decade in the planning.
The director of Picnic at Hanging Rock and Dead Poets Society, Weir is not an obvious candidate for a Hollywood action-adventure movie. But he brings a characteristic sensitivity and craft that lifts Master and Commander from a likely Hollywood summer blockbuster to a rich cinematic experience.
Master and Commander opens on December 4.
© 2003 Sydney Morning Herald
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