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Poster (c) 20th Century Fox
It wouldn’t win best visual effects. It had exactly the effects I have come to expect from Fox and Universal. Universal has always had cheesy effects that weren’t believable, which was only added onto by Fox, whose gunshots are just bright yellow lights. I can’t believe that Fox needed two major companies to assist with the funding. It certainly didn’t show. Some of the shots of the boat on water looked very good, however, but not real in any way.
It wouldn’t win best cinematography. It seemed like often it was trying to go for something a little different that wouldn’t really be noticeable but would have people saying, “Something was different about this movie.” However, for even the easiest of shots to shoot (that were probably even done with second unit), the camera couldn’t even stay still. If what they were going for was an amateur feel to the camera work, then they succeeded. Near the end, in the obligatory huge fight scene, the fighting was barely visible. Everything was so quickly cut it was impossible to see what was happening.
It wouldn’t win best screenplay. Every single character, even the lead, had absolutely no development to them. When Cap’n Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) is seen in the beginning, he is writing a letter to his girlfriend to show how lonely he is. However, he neither shows his loneliness nor even references his girlfriend again. People who we don’t know anything about suddenly become involved, and it’s impossible to tell people apart. And this could be that I’m just not that learned in the history of the British Navy during the Napoleonic era, but why would eight-year-olds be allowed to be in the navy and be allowed to kill various people?
It wouldn’t win best director. The way Peter Weir directs it is leisurely at some times and haphazardly at others, both at inappropriate times. At the climactic fight scene, Weir is so interested in making sure we know that the British will win, he doesn’t bother on the small stuff that is actually important, like being able to tell what is happening! Who is doing what to whom? It’s impossible to see. You can’t even see who is British and who is French!
It wouldn’t win best actor. Russell Crowe does his typical shtick, trying to act well to get an Oscar, but he just doesn’t work here. The only other semi-large name is Paul Bettany, who starred with Crowe in A Beautiful Mind. See my note for Crowe. All of the other actors were rather invisible; most of their dialogue was just barking orders to and fro. There wasn’t really any room for acting.
It wouldn’t win best actress, mainly because there’s only about two in the entire film and are both on screen for a total of five seconds.
Lastly, it wouldn’t win best picture, mainly because as much as the Academy enjoys long, boring movies, it rarely goes for action movies like Master and Commander tries to be. It had too many subplots, all mainly there for an excuse for the ending “resolution”. Most didn’t go anywhere. If they had been taken out, then it could have been a more tolerable length, not this, at an overwhelming two-and-a-quarter hours.
If I were to say one redeeming quality of Master and Commander, it would be to say that in the beginning it was quite good, with a good action scene right off of the bat. After that, however, it just seemed like randomly people started to fight and it soon veered off into boredom. The subsequent action scenes aren’t good, because I was too bored during the rest to really be entertained by the action, or by the rest of the movie.
Rated PG-13 for intense battle sequences, related images, and brief language.
Review Date: November 15, 2003