Peter Weir

Although the film's special effects ate up a huge budget they never overtake the drama, with careful characterisation and painstaking attention to historical accuracy taking centre stage. Matching action to detail, drama to humour and special effects to well-sketched characters, Master and Commander is a deeply satisfying big-screen experience, breathing a bracing gust of sea air into Hollywood megabuck filmmaking.--Laura Bushell

On the DVD: Master & Commander's single-disc edition displays the full glories of the big screen experience, with Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS sound options that make the most of the resounding battle scenes as well as the small but vital details of creaking planks and lapping waves, while the sweeping CinemaScope (2.35:1) photography anamorphically formatted for 16:9 widescreen splendidly reproduces Peter Weir's painterly compositions. It's a tad disappointing, then, to note the lack of a director's commentary (surely such an insightful director as Weir would have plenty to say) and the excessive promotional material--cinema trailers and plugs for Fox DVDs-- that plays even before the main menu screen appears: anyone who has bought this title for repeat viewing deserves not to be subjected to such a broadside of soon-to-be-out-of-date advertising. --Mark Walker
masterful pastiche, 2010-04-10
I liked 'Master and Commander' a lot when I saw it at the cinema. Then a week later I found myself ordering it on DVD; it had sucked me in. Very rarely is a film half as successful in conjuring up a whole lost world. HMS Surprise is not just a ship of war (rebuilt, as I understand it, plank for plank from the original plans) but a society in miniature, with its own rules, rituals, and superstitions.

Prior to seeing the film, I'd had only a very vague awareness of the Patrick O'Brien books. It inspired me to seek them out: I'm now half-way through the last complete novel ('Blue at the Mizzen') and it's been a pleasure to spot odd bits and pieces along the way that made it into the film. The title, combining as it does the titles of two of the novels in O'Brien's massive prose sequence (Master and Commander / The Far Side of the World), suggests to aficionados that the plot will be a straightforward splice of the two, but that's not at all the case: the film darts in and out of the Aubrey/Maturin literary canon with the same devil-may-care confidence that O'Brien himself applied to naval history. It's an exquisite confection, lightly alluding to major plot strands in the novels (Maturin's intelligence work, the ups and downs of Jack's marriage) without ever bogging down, and press-ganging numerous 'best bits' in the service of an original plot. This plot is threadbare, admittedly, but no more so than (if we're frank) the plots of many of the novels - in fact there's rather more going on here than in most of those. A quality film; I wish that it may haunt your dreams as it haunted mine.

I'll admit to a little bias, this is my favourite film. I love those others too, so maybe if you liked them it's worth checking this one out. BBC2 show it from time to time. I only wish they would release it on DVD.

The film is a pretty close reproduction of Paul Theroux's book of the same name. BBC2 fans will know of the author's son, Louis, from his weird weekends and off beat interviews.

The action starts in typical America - predictable, arid, and swamped with Japanese imports... our (anti-)hero, maverick inventor Allie Fox (Harrison Ford) decides to uproot his wife and family (Helen Mirren, River Phoenix, etc), and relocate them all to a remote jungle town where they are to live in a utopia far removed from the modern world, but also far removed from what the native people are used to.

Of course this tense paradise cannot last, and the story unfolds with conflicts-a-plenty: undiscovered jungle tribes; bible bashing missionaries, and gun toting mercenaries.

The film is narrated by Allie's son Charlie (River Phoenix) in perhaps his best role before his untimely death. The feel of the picture is almost undescribable.. the cinematograpy awe-inspiring without being cliche.. the acting flawless, story captivating...

In short.. a little known masterpiece from an otherwise well known director