Master and Commander - Sea Trek

my rating: Nathan's rating:

The far side of the world, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the H.M.S. Surprise. Her mission: to explore strange new lands, to see out new life and new civlization, but mostly to boldly fight the ships of Napoleon's navy wherever they may go.

Actually, I'd say that Master and Commander is more like a submarine movie. You have the the assorted seamen of various ranks, cooped up on a small vessel for weeks on end, month after month. They take turns acting with practiced coordination to operate the ship, and going after each other's throats like cellmates. You have the periodic exchanges of weapon fire with other vessels. There are the sequences in which the ship is pushed beyond its limits, barely holding together following a near-crippling battle. All of these familiar scenes from other submarine movies.

I make this comparison neither to damn nor to praise this film, just to point out what kind of film it is. Within the genre, it falls somewhere between Das Boot and Operation Petticoat... but much closer to the former than to the latter.

As the title suggests - twice ("master" and "commander" both refer to the same character) - the main focus of the story is Russell Crowe's character, Captain "Lucky Jack" Aubrey, who leads his British crew on a courageous mission in the waters surrounding South America, a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a superior French warship. His supporting cast/crew includes his old friend the ship's doctor, who is the only man able to address the commander as merely one man to another (a bit like Bones and Kirk). The rest are underlings, including several fresh-faced youngsters who, by virtue of their class, hold the ranks of low-level officers. A combination of tragedy and premature coming of age for them is inevitable.

The movie wasn't overly predictable in the sense that you know early on exactly what's going to happen to whom. It's not just plotted by the numbers. But ironically, the saga of the Suprise was somewhat lacking in surprises. Several of what were perhaps intended to be surprises weren't all that difficult to anticipate, sometimes to the point that I questioned Capt. Jack's military competence in not figuring them out himself.

The performances are all good, the action (equal parts battle and seamanship) is exciting, and there's enough unsettling detail about life aboard a military sailing ship at the dawn of the 19th century to give it a genuine sense of atmosphere. Although not the knuckle-biter or human drama I expected, it was a pretty good submarine (or Star Trek) movie.