Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)

This is a rousing sea yarn with great camera work, but it also shows comraderie and relationships in a realistic way on board a British fighting ship.
As happens sometimes but not always, I enjoyed this movie more than I liked the book it was based upon. O'Brian has written a lot of great sea tales, but this one confused me. I felt like checking to see if the pages were in the correct order. The story seems simplified in this adaptation. (Some may say that is not a good thing!)
The first several minutes of the film move the viewer around the ship, and I felt like It was a realistic representation of what it was like to sail on it. The creaking and other ever-present noises, the tight spaces allotted to the crew, all helped me feel like I knew what it was like more than just reading about it.
There are a lot of characters aboard ship, so out of necessity some of them never really developed, but even the glimpses we get of them here and there illustrate that they are people, not stereotypes. There were a few rather unlikely plot turns later on in the film, but by then I was drawn into the story and right there with the crew, so I forgave them. I have watched Master and Commander twice so far, and wouldn't be averse to seeing it again.

What you have here is Crowe still thinking that he's the greatest actor that ever lived.
That all takes away the fun of a movie that had the potential to be a high seas epic like, say, Captain Blood.
Peter Weir lets Crowe go crazy and you can almost taste the ego dripping out of the pours of every seen, so much so that he doesn't allow Paul Bettany to shine and he's a good actor in his own right, as is James D'Arcy and again, Crowe seems to want to hog all the acting glory there too.
Honestly, its hard to sit down and watch a man try to upstage everyone in every scene, especially when they are actors that could hold their own against Crowe...if Crowe allowed that to happen.
So, you get to sit back and watch ego and that gets boring.
It's a shame, the script and directing were there, it could have been a great film if we didn't just see ego shine.