Master & Commander: The Far Side Of The World

Hard to starboard, mates. We have to see some previews. HIDALGO–Omar Sharif goes back to Arabia for this one. It stars our King…er, Viggo Mortensen as half-breed Indian Pony Express rider who travels to Arabia to race his horse, Hidalgo, across the desert. Omar is, of course, an Arabian.

Looks like a good one. And there’s a sandstorm that looks better than anything they bought at Walgreen’s for The Mummy. I’ll check it out. Probably not until video, though. As I’ve said before, I’m not a big horse guy.

THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW–”From the director of Independence Day.”

Yeah, that’s all I really need to know, too. What they don’t tell us is: “From the director of Godzilla.” That would make people stay away in appropriate droves.

This has something to do with weather destroying the Earth again. (Remember last time? It involving lots of animals and an inhumanly large boat.) The last line of this teaser is something like, “Collect all that you can.”

I’m scared. I don’t want to be sucked into this movie, but I know I can’t avoid it. But I did manage to avoid ever seeing The Core, so maybe…

Thar she blows. No more previews. Let’s get back to the main mast.

Peter Weir has a habit of finding new talent and bringing them to the eyes of the public forever. Mel Gibson, Viggo Mortensen, Linda Hunt, Kelly McGillis, Harrison Ford’s acting abilities, Jim Carrey’s acting abilities…the list goes on and on. Especially once you get to Dead Poet’s Society.

This time out he has exactly two people who have already “made it” (Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany–so he’s still on his way…close enough) and an entire cast of kids who are probably going to be future stars.

Captain Jack Aubrey (Crowe) is the captain of the HMS Surprise in 1805. England and France are at war and the seas, as the opening scroll says, have become a battleground. The Surprise has a smallish crew of mainly boys. Now, I don’t know much about English warfare, but I guess they couldn’t get enough grown men to be on their ships back in the early 1800s.

This is where they’ve already got me. Kids in peril. I’m hooked.

While the Surprise is out searching for the French battleship Acheron, they are lost in a fog bank. What they don’t know is so is the Acheron. Surprise! Cannons flare, people die and the Aubrey’s ship is crippled. The rest of the movie is cat and mouse up and down the coast of South America. Even after they should pack up and go home Aubrey keeps going after this ship. It’s bigger, faster and has more firepower than the Surprise, but he’s on a mission now. He’s obsessed (Weir’s favorite subject: obsessed men in way over their heads). His best friend and ship’s doctor, Stephen Maturin (Bettany) urges him to stop and let the men rest, but the show must go on.

But Aubrey is not an asshole. He’s actually a very good captain and he knows what his men can and will do. They all love him and will do anything for him, even if it means giving their lives for the ship. He loves his men, too. When he has to sacrifice one of them for the good of the rest, it’s the hardest decision he’s ever had to make.

Basically, if you’ve seen The Wrath Of Kahn, you’ve seen Master & Commander.

But I sound like I’m putting the movie down. Remember, I’m comparing it to Kahn, not Final Frontier. Master & Commander is a very good film.

(There are actually a LOT of similarities between this film and Kahn: two obsessed captain playing in the fog, “the good of the many outweigh the good of the one,” the Surprise is an old ship that needs to be re-fitted. And, ok, there’s one for Final Frontier, too: the captain and his friend(s) playing music together.

I’ll stop now.)

But let me get through a misconception. I had heard about how gory this film was and how the “horrors of war” are shown so well. The film had its share of blood and a little bit of war-like gore, but not nearly as much as some of the hype would let on. There is an amputation scene which I had heard was very graphic. Guess what? No blood. They show the kid’s arm being banded up and then they show his face as Stephen saws it off. That’s much more horrible than if they had shown the actual cutting.

And that’s just it, really. The horrors are shown on the people’s faces. When their shipmates die, they die, too.

But let’s get back to that kid. Yeah, the one with the sawed off arm.

Midshipman Blakeney (Max Pirkis) is one of the few kids here who gets a real, full-fledged personality. (This is not a put-down to the film, really. There are a LOT of kids on board. We really only needed to get to know a couple for the whole ship to be alive with character. They stood in for all the rest.) Luckily, Max is a very good actor. I think from watching his expressions throughout this film we know how a kid would act in the middle of a war. He’s probably about 12 years old and is all innocence. But he knows that anyone can die right next to him. And that’s the saddest thing to see in a kid’s face.

The other kid to watch for is Max Benitz as Midshipman Calamy. He is the first of the young ones to be promoted and is a friend of Blakeney’s. According to the website, he was up for a role in the next Harry Potter film, but if you believe the IMDb, he didn’t get it. That’s too bad. He’s also a good actor and should be popping up in more things soon.

Crowe and Bettany were great as always. Crowe is able to walk that thin line between fun loving friend (Jack and Stephen play violin and cello together every night and the officer’s dinner is always an event) and obsessed captain without ever letting one get too much in the way of the other. But they never really fall too far away from each other, either. And Bettany plays his role with just as much determination as his captain. He may be on the opposite end of the fence, but he’s obsessed, also. What naturalist wouldn’t be when he first sees the Galapagos Islands? (This is the first film to ever shoot on the Islands. And, man is it beautiful. But I didn’t see any Komodo dragons. Disappointing.)

And here’s a little tidbit that I hadn’t noticed before. (Actually, I’m sure I read it somewhere, but I just forgot): Billy Boyd is in this one! That’s right. Pippin is in his first film after that little trilogy he was in. Good for him! Now, get away from the Aussie/Kiwi directors, bud. They rock, but check out some Hollywood fare. Let’s see how you do.

Oh. I guess Weir is pretty much Hollywood now, huh? Oh well.

Billy’s good, but he doesn’t have a lot to do. He just yells out a line here and there and then goes back to smiling like the idiot he knows how to play so well or he goes into serious Pippin mode. He’s great at both. Can’t wait to see if he can do something else.

As far as action films go, this is a hard one to quantify. It’s got action (and damn good action, at that), but I wouldn’t call it an action film. It’s definitely a drama about warfare and the stupidity of it all. It’s also about camaraderie in war. And, above all, it’s about obsession.

It’s a great film. Check it out, won’t you?

Here’s a question someone out there may be able to answer: How many production companies is too many? I remember when Fox and Paramount banded together to put out a movie about some boat or another back in 1997. That was pretty much the first time anyone had done this. Master & Commander has no less than THREE big production companies on it! Fox, Miramax and Universal all got together to do this one. What the fuck?! It’s like no one wants to take a gamble alone anymore. Or are they just letting everyone in on a piece of the pie?

Wait. No, that can’t be it.

This is a strange phenomenon. Soon all companies will be working on all films and we won’t need separation anymore. Imagine there no production companies. It’s easy, if you try.

I guess now we can always tell when a film is risky. Just count the companies.