Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World | Full Movie | Movies Anywhere

Above all else, it’s a portrait of a complex but ultimately healthy male friendship. The kind where the captain and ship surgeon take breaks from their adventures to play classical music duets. (20th anniversary)

The film depicts the indignities of a 19th-century life at sea, along with the horrors of the Napoleonic Wars. But the narrative rests on the bedrock of Aubrey and Maturin’s friendship.

Weir wisely grounds the intense but wearying high seas adventure in the friendship between Aubrey and Paul Bettany as Dr. Stephen Maturin, the ship’s surgeon who tends to the many wounded.

The attention to detail is mesmerizing, the action is thrilling, and Weir never lets you forget the stakes and the consequences for all the stalwart heroism.