Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is a 2003 British-Australian epic historical drama film directed by Peter Weir, starring Russell Crowe as Jack Aubrey, with Paul Bettany as Stephen Maturin and released by 20th Century Fox, Miramax Films and Universal Studios. The film's plot and characters are adapted from three novels in author Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey–Maturin series, which has a total of 20 novels of Jack Aubrey's naval career.

 

Captain "Lucky" Jack Aubrey (Crowe), renowned as a fighting captain in the British Navy, and ship's doctor Stephen Maturin (Bettany) are on board their ship, the H.M.S. Surprise, when they're suddenly attacked by a superior enemy. With the Surprise badly damaged and much of his crew injured, Aubrey is torn between duty and friendship as he pursues a high-stakes chase across two oceans, to intercept and capture his foe. It's a mission that can make his reputation -- or destroy Lucky Jack and his crew. In the course of the characters' epic journey, the movie travels the world -- from the coast of Brazil to the storm-tossed waters of Cape Horn, south through ice and snow, to the far side of the world, to the remote shores of The Galapagos Islands.

 

The film combines elements from 13 different novels of Patrick O'Brian, but the basic plot mostly comes from The Far Side of the World. However, in the film version, the action takes place in 1805, during the Napoleonic wars, instead of 1813 during the Anglo-American war, as the producers wished to avoid offending American audiences. In consequence, the fictional opponent was changed from the USS Norfolk to the French privateer frigate Acheron. Acheron in the film was reconstructed by the film's special-effects team who took stem-to-stern digital scans of USS Constitution at her berth in Boston, from which the computer model of Acheron was rendered.

 

Master and Commander was critically well received. 85% of 204 reviews tallied by the aggregate web site Rotten Tomatoes gave the film an overall positive rating, and the film has a "certified fresh" rating. Roger Ebert gave the movie 4 stars out of 4, saying that "it achieves the epic without losing sight of the human. "

 

At the 76th Academy Awards, the film was nominated for 10 Oscars, including Best Picture. It won in two categories, Best Cinematography and Best Sound Editing and lost in all other categories to The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.