MASTER AND COMMANDER

Master and Commander:
The Far Side of the World


Though the scenes of battle and broken bodies are brutal and gruesome, and every
cannonball threatens to crush bones as callously as it shatters wood, much of the film
is calm and contemplative. Weir has managed to craft an emotional film
that draws one in to the lives and world of the characters it portrays without necessarily
offering too much detail as to their personal stories. I-- Dana Rowader

Brief Review
Grade*
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Eleanor Ringel Gillespie
"Masterful and commanding." more...
B+
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
"The opening 15 minutes of Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World are so well crafted that they restore your faith in commercial cinema." more...
B+
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
"...an exuberant sea adventure told with uncommon intelligence..." more...
A
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
"...probably the best movie of its kind ever made." more...
A
E! Online
"Even if you're a total landlubber, you should enlist for Master and Commander..." more...
A-
filmcritic.com
David Levine
"Master and Commander is a masterpiece." more...
A
Hollywood Reporter
Michael Rechtshaffen
"Masterful direction and commanding performances make this epic voyage highly see-worthy." more...
A
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
"Bracing high-seas adventure with a brain." more...
A-
New York Times
A.O. Scott
"...stupendously entertaining..." more...
A
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
"...this may be the best-looking film ever made about a seafaring vessel." more...
B
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
"...a rousing high-seas adventure that sweeps you into another world." more...
A-


USA Today
Mike Clark
"...mystically entertaining..."
magnificent vigor and precision.
A stupendously entertaining movie


The smallest details of shipboard behavior become breathlessly absorbing. The battle sequences are filmed with impressive coherence
and rigor, but ''Master and Commander'' is, if anything, most thrilling between skirmishes, when the complex system of authority and
deference -- and the personality traits needed to keep it running -- is at the center of attention.

Peter Weir
Add New Link
Links to other sites about Master and Commander: TheHow Master and Commander gets Patrick O'Brian wrong.
Posted Friday, Nov. 14, 2003, at 3:30 PM PT





After his final defeat at Waterloo in 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte was taken by Her Majesty's Ship Bellerophon to his exile on the island of St. Helena, on the far side of the world. He was allowed by custom and courtesy to take his exercise on the quarterdeck every day (there is a famous painting of this somewhere in the National Gallery in London) and, having observed the iron discipline and nautical skill of the officers and crew, is said to have told the Bellerophon's captain at dinner that he now at last understood why his attempt at the Empire had been brought low.

This review is brought to you by a navy brat whose father is buried in the grounds of the modest little chapel, overlooking Portsmouth Harbor in England, where Eisenhower held the service on the night before D-Day. The stained-glass windows record this, as they do many other gallant episodes. I was reading C.S. Forester's Hornblower books when I was 8, and though I can't really tell a mizzen from a capstan I am steeped in the lore of the Royal Navy, and I devoured Patrick O'Brian's 20-volume masterpiece as if it had been so many tots of Jamaica grog. (If you care to know what I made of them, you may consult the March 9, 2000, New York Review of Books.)
Far Side of the World