Master and Commander: The far side of the world. Definitive Edition DVD

HMS Surprise forever!

Dir Peter Weir.

So whats wrong with Peter Weirs adaptation of Patrick O'Brian's 'Master and Commander'?

The most obvious flaw is the casting of Paul Bettany as the character of Stephen Maturin. He is too tall, too fair, too 'post modern' and not nearly eccentric enough. He complains and argues (in a Brit accent) with Jack Aubrey throughout the film and worst of all he is Paul Bettany. At no point in Bettanys portrayel did I feel I was close to the orignal character from the books. Now I know that any one who read the book first will have their own notions of who a character is, but this isn't just a simple case of my eye as the beholder being biased. Paul Bettany simply isn't Stephen Maturin. He doesn't look like him, act like him or sound like him. Granted Stephen Maturin was always going to be a hard part to fill, but its as if Weir and his script writer simply decided to do away with the original character and just make up a whole new one with the same name. Where are the crippled hands? Where is the eccentric dress sense? Where is Diana? where is the addiction to laudanum? where is the espionage? where is the overwhelming sense of a man out of his element?


I don't dislike Paul Bettany, and I quite like this film, as a film. I'll be honest, if I hadn't read the books (all twenty of them, five times in a row) I'd be well impressed. But I have read the books and because I've read them, I care greatly about the two main characters for it is they who make the story's work. Replace Stephen Maturin with Paul Bettany and you get a cross grained, ill bred concoction that just won't float!

Apart from that the story is simple to the point of pure pleasure. I do so love a film that replaces plot with ambience, especially when the ambience is historical. The attention to historical detail is excellent, though the Archeron is a bit 'over the top'. I'm not sure how credible a 44 gun American heavy frigate privateer flying the French flag is. Your either an American privateer or you are a French man of war, you can't be both. I also think its a bit dubious for the Americans in 1805 to be sending one of their 44 gun heavy frigates out as a privateer. Those ships were state of the art in those days and not the sort of asset one lent to privateers. Here is a quote from Wikipedia to illustrate my point:

In 1797, the US Navy's first major ships were 44-gun frigates (or "super-frigates"), which actually carried fifty-six to sixty 24-pounder long guns and 36-pounder or 48-pounder carronades on two decks, and were exceptionally powerful and tough. These ships were so well-respected that they were often seen as equal to 4th-rate ships of the line and, after a series of losses at the outbreak of the War of 1812, British Royal Navy fighting instructions ordered British frigates (usually of 38-guns or less) to never engage American frigates at any less than a 2:1 advantage. The USS Constitution, better known as "Old Ironsides", the oldest commissioned ship afloat, is the last remaining example of an American 44.

HMS Surprise, a sixth rate, 28 gun frigate would be utterly annhiliated by a 44 gun heavy frigate. There is no contest. I know Jack Aubrey is a hero blessed by great fortune, but there are bounderies to credulity and I do not recall any ship in the books called Archeron. I'm not convinced O'Brian would have made up such a ship for he was extremelly well informed on the fighting ships of the Napoleonic wars. I do know which book the bulk of the film is based upon, and of the two enemy ships in 'The wine-dark sea' neither is a 44 gun American heavy frigate. The ship I take the Archeron to be based on is the Franklin, 22 guns, a far inferior American privateer, owned by an errant French man named Dutourd. I guess that a ship inferior to HMS Surprise just wasn't considered interesting enough for the cinematic audience.

As for the DVD. I don't know what makes it so 'definitive'. There's nothing extra added to the film as far as I can see, though they do include a few cut scenes in the special features.