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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bob Aberton" data-source="post: 1227187" data-attributes="member: 1518">I third that; two thumbs up from Bob Aberton.This was an awesome movie by any standard, but I think this is the best historical naval movie that I've seen since watching the A&E Horation Hornblower miniseries.  This is what Hornblower would have been with a higher budget and a more involved plot.The opening scene was absolutely perfect, the naval battles were - well, they defy description.  You could almost feel the splinters flying past you, it was that good.  The plot was very good, the acting was awesome (I thought Crowe and Bettany made an excellent duo in particular), although I had hoped that Mr. Pulling's character would have been a bit more unique - as it was, he almost seemed like "Generic Naval Officer #1."  Mr. Midshipman Blakely (played by Max Pirkis, I believe) was very convincing as a 13 year old forced to grow up fast in the face of war and loss (and amputation).  Mr. Midshipman Hollom was a pitifully tragic figure, and Plaice and Killick were particularly well acted as a pair of gruff old sea dogs.  The subplots ([spoiler]Mr. Blakely's amputation, Dr. Maturin operating on himself, Mr. Hollom's despair and suicide[/spoiler]), as has been said, were well done and avoiding both triviality and over-importance.All in all, this was basically a very realistic picture of naval life in the Age of Sail, complete with floggings, bad food, terrible weather, bloody sea fights, and the occasional near-mutiny.  It definately gets points for historical accuracy, I like to think of myself as a pretty hard core nautical history buff and I could find almost no obvious inaccuracies (except maybe the lack of deadlights on the stern windows during battle and the strange lack of subordinate lieutenants - they had a midshipman as Officer of the Watch, I was under the impression that frigates of that class would have at least two lieutenants, who would each take a watch...).  The characters were even wearing their cocked hats in the proper navy fashion.  I also like the fact that they didn't dumb it down so "landlubbers" could grasp everything, it was liberally peppered with sailor-speak, and even tacking the ship I could find no inaccuracies in the sequence of commands or the actor's execution of them.It had its lighthearted moments as well (the weevil race come to mind, as well as one of Capt. Aubrey's speeches; "Men, she may be bigger than us, and faster than us, and more heavily armed, but we have SURPRISE [HMS SURPRISE being, of course, Aubrey's ship] on our side!").  I also found Capt. Aubrey's hero-worship of Admiral Nelson to be rather amusing.  But what I liked most about these moments was that it they didn't break the mood at all; they came across as genuine, if funny, moments or dialogue rather than an attempt at humor.  No fourth-wall-breaking humor here, and Weir managed to preserve the epic mood without suffocating us with it. And the storms.  My God, I've never seen footage this realistic.  I swear I attempted several times to mop the spray off my face - I was sitting right in front of the screen and I could all but taste the salt and feel the gale in my hair.  Up till now The Perfect Storm has had the best storm-sailing footage that I have seen, and the 1960s Mutiny on the Bounty came very, very close, but neither of those movies has anything at all on Master and Commander.  I would have been perfectly happy if the entire movie was occupied just with the SURPRISE rounding Cape Horn.  And it was a very emotionally moving scene when [spoiler]Aubrey is forced to abandon a man overboard to his fate because it would be impossible to save him without risking his ship; the final shot has the ship sailing away through the massive Cape Horn swell and you see the sailor's head receding farther away with each wave until he disappears over the horizon.[/spoiler] Powerful stuff.</blockquote>

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