There isn't much I've seen Russell Crowe in that I've truly liked. I feel like a certain smugness that is all the actor and not the character seems to seep into everything he does. But I thought he wasn't bad here in this movie. Either he kept that undertone I abhor in check, or it seemed to fit more naturally with this character. It also helps that he's mostly sharing the screen with the far more talented Paul Bettany, who plays the doctor to Crowe's captain.
No, what I didn't like was the script itself. Though ostensibly about the pursuit of a rival French ship, the plot ambles around to all sorts of minor deviations. I found the whole movie to be quite short in its attention span, and it was only afterward, when I was reading about the film's background, that I found the reason why. Master and Commander is based on a long-running series of novels by Patrick O'Brian, of which The Far Side of the World is but one. But reportedly, the film is not a simple adaptation of that novel; rather, it combines elements of no less than thirteen of O'Brian's books!
Consequently, the movie is a cobbled together "greatest hits" of the HMS Surprise. Here's the one where they stop at the Galapagos Islands. Here's the one where the cabin boy loses an arm. Here's the one where the doctor has to perform surgery on himself. And so on, and so on. A long procession of subplots, each filling 5 to 10 minutes, constantly distracts from the overriding mission of finding the French ship, and eroded my patience every step of the way.
By the time it was all over, the convincing sets, the sweeping music, and all the other trappings were no longer enough to keep my boredom at bay. In the end, I wanted my two hours back. I'd grade Master and Commander a D-. Clearly, there are people out there who like it, but don't count me among them.
No comments:
Post a Comment