Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

This is a well shot movie. Despite 95% of this movie taking place in one location -- on a boat -- the cinematography and visual direction here is fantastic. I felt like I was a member of the crew, on the deck, below decks, and in the captain's quarters. Every inch of the boat is used and used well, and for that matter, so is the ocean around it. Peter Weir understood how to not only convey the feeling of life on the boat, but how being surrounded by thousands of miles of open water, off the coast of an unfamiliar continent, can amplify the feelings of being stir crazy on a boat into madness. This also extends to the action sequences, which could've easily been shot in a typical action movie style, but instead are treated as gritty and unpleasant and destructive as they can be. Even in the final battle, there's no singular swashbuckling hero winning every swordfight. It looks what I'd imagine naval combat looked like in the early 1800's. It's also acted well. There's very few name actors here, just Russell Crowe in the lead and Paul Bettany as his best friend and ship's doctor, but everyone here comes to play. There's no one here out of a Pirates Of The Caribbean movie, no corny salty sailor tropes, just real people enduring storms, droughts, battle damage, and loneliness. It's also scored well. For what feels like half the movie, there's barely any score, just the sound of the movie and the occasional sea chanties sung by crewmen. Even when a score presents itself, it's used well, never feeling out of place or corny. The score always underscores the emotion of the moment appropriately. I even love how the antagonists, a French privateer ship, are kept at arms length the entire movie. We never get a scene on the French boat with the captain. M&C could've lapsed into standard us vs. them cliches and done that, turned them into mustache twirling heels, or vengeance-driven maniacs like Khan in Star Trek II. Instead, they're kept completely anonymous, a ship on the horizon that the heroes are chasing and nothing more. I just wish this all this positive was in service of characters or a story I gave half a damn about. Few of the ensemble cast of characters are given any sort of depth beyond "crewman on a ship". We're shown that Captain Aubrey (Crowe) and Dr. Maturin (Bettany) are friends, but judging from their temperaments and outlooks and interests, I haven't the slightest idea why. I'm glad they didn't make Aubrey a bloodthirsty tyrant captain, but they went too far in the opposite direction, making him so collected and cool, he comes off as unaffected and smug. He talks about duty to the Royal Navy and the crowd, but I never once felt that sense of duty. Bettany's character, meanwhile, wants to document the undiscovered species of flora and fauna on the Galapagos Islands, and he harps on it a lot, which feels ridiculous in context; you're on a warship, dude, not an expeditionary ship. You're not an explorer, you're on a military vessel with a mission. Stop asking the captain to abandon his duty so you can chart birds and bugs. And the pacing of the script itself is just tiresome. It feels like a parade of "what elements can we throw at them to delay the final fight", and after a while, it stops being interesting. Oh, a storm, then a drought, then discontent among the crew, then an near mutiny because of an incident with an unpopular officer, then a shooting accident that wounds the doctor, then, and then, and then, and then ... JUST GET TO THE FINAL BATTLE ALREADY. It's a fine enough movie, and I'm sure if you're big into naval combat or British history, this will be up your alley. For me, everything I commended can't alter the fact that the story gets tiresome, and the characters never develop. It's like watching a stunt show at a theme park. It all looks quite cool, but without something actually tying it together to give any of it actual stakes, it's just stunts for the sake of doing them.