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As Captain "Lucky" Jack Aubrey, commander of the British naval vessel HMS Surprise, which stalks the French warship
Acheron around Cape Horn in 1805, Russell Crowe has finally found a role he can really sink his teeth into, with as much testosterone
gusto as he did with his early career high-point Romper Stomper. Like that film's vicious skinhead Hando, Crowe inhabits the
role of Lucky Jack fully, and while the two characters couldn't be more different, Crowes metamorphosis into each one is something
to behold.
Based on Patrick O'Brian's series of historical novels, which take place during the Napoleonic wars, when France ruled
the seas, "Master and Commander.." may seem at first an odd choice for director Weir, whose earlier years were spent
helming character-driven narratives that bordered on the metaphysical Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave, and even Gallipoli
before breaking out with 1989's Dead Poets Society. Master and Commander, while very much a rollicking and explosive chronicle
of one long naval battle and all of which that implies, retains Weir's fascination with humans under extreme conditions.
It's a pressure cooker at sea, and to his credit, Crowe, as the single-minded captain both tough and fair, makes it all
come together through sheer persona. With his stocky, muscular frame clad (for the most part) in a soaking wet uniform with
epaulets that have seen better days, and a grim and tight-lipped smile stretched forever across his face, he looks like a
shark, cunning and intractable. Master and Commander takes him and his crew including his ships doctor and resident naturalist
Dr. Maturin (the outstanding Paul Bettany) and young coxswain Barrett Bonden (Billy Boyd) on a voyage of vendetta around
the coast of Brazil after the Acheron causes serious damage to the Surprise and forces them to drop the pursuit while repairs
are made.
The key military problem here is that the French ship, with its 44 heavy cannons, outguns the Surprise, and even worse,
as Lucky Jack soon discovers, the Acheron has a special double hull which renders the Surprises own guns ineffective at all
but the closest range. That means, of course, that Jack will have to maneouvre his vessel perilously close to inflict the
kind of damage he means to. There's more to Master and Commander than just cannon fire and fodder, however. When not shooting
holes in ships, Weir focuses on the details of an 18th-century life at sea, where below-deck triage means amputating a young
boy's arm without benefit of anesthesia, as happens (frequently) to Dr. Maturin, followed by a string-instrument duet in the
captain's quarters between Maturin and Aubrey. Weir's film captures the essential conundrum of sea life, mainly that it's
an intensely claustrophobic affair set against the most open and unprepossessing areas on the planet. A humanistic adventure
film that's both rich with characterisation and concussive cannon bursts, Master and Commander is, surprisingly, some of the
best work either Crowe or Weir have ever done.
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