MASTER AND COMMANDER – THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD
A shameless Russell Crowe vanity project, hilariously overblown to an extent that makes Gladiator look like a solo tour-de-force display of restraint and modesty, the unashamedly grandiose high-seas epic Master and Commander appears to finally confirm Hollywood blockbuster cinema’s ignoble retreat into antiquated Ben Hur-derived idiocy, following the avalanche of braindead disaster-flicks that have disfigured the cinematic landscape since 1996.
A bigger, more bloated version of the recently successful Pirates Of The Caribbean with almost double the latter’s budget, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World dispenses entirely with subtlety in favour of bombast, with (appropriately) Aussie dickhead Russell Crowe hamming it up hilariously in the central role.
Crowe, who at this stage practically pockets Oscar nominations by moving his bowels, stars as the absurdly pompous Captain Jack Aubrey, a Lord Nelson protege who looks as if his bulk (an apparent tribute to Free Willy) is about to capsize the entire vessel. As befits such a temperamental genius, no-one even approximating A-list status is granted anything other than the most fawning sidekick role to deflect attention from Crowe’s glorious macho heroics: Billy Boyd, hitherto best-known as Pippin the Hobbit from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, plays Captain Aubrey’s Coxswain, while Paul Bettany is granted the relative dignity of a supporting role as the ship’s doctor.
What unfolds is a typical, time-honoured swashbuckling pirate epic along the lines of the Saturday-morning matinee epics of ancient memory, but with modern effects and phenomenal budgetary expense: men sail on the high seas, men drink rum, men swap jokes and stories, men fight and drown. As you may have gathered by now, it’s also the most suspiciously homoerotic entry into the cinematic canon since Ridley Scott’s White Squall or even Wolfgang Pedersen’s Das Boot.
Although worth a laugh or three on the mere basis of Crowe’s preposterously overwrought performance, Master and Commander is an unimaginably hideous vision of everything that blockbuster cinema would do well to move away from.