Based on the best-selling novels of Patrick O’Brian, the film stars Russell Crowe as “Lucky” Jack Aubrey, who pits his crew of the H.M.S. Surprise against a much better armed and ruthless privateer, in a chase that takes him all the way to the far side of the world. Rising newcomer Paul Bettany plays the ship’s surgeon Dr. Stephen Maturin.
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.
Master and Commander is directed by Peter Weir from a screenplay by Weir & John Collee, based upon the novels by Patrick O’Brian. O’Brian’s “Aubrey/Maturin” novels, so named after the lead characters, were declared by Richard Snow, in The New York Times to be “the best historical novels ever written.” David Mamet, also writing in the Times, called O’Brian one of the greatest novelists writing in the English language over the past 30 years. As to O’Brian’s creation, Captain Jack Aubrey, the Times later noted that Russell Crowe “seems born to play him.”
The project originated over ten years ago when two legends – Hollywood producer Samuel Goldwyn, Jr. and celebrated author Patrick O’Brian – had preliminary conversations about turning some of O’Brian’s Aubrey / Maturin stories into a film. It was Goldwyn who first saw the cinematic potential of O’Brian’s work, and he persuaded the author, who had not been to the movies in years, that the medium would well serve the adventures of Captain Jack Aubrey and Dr. Stephen Maturin.
The film that resulted a decade later is based on the principal characters first introduced in O’Brian’s book Master and Commander, but employs the broad narrative outline of the tenth of 20 Aubrey/Maturin novels, The Far Side of the World. Peter Weir believed the latter had a more direct, cinematic and adaptable story structure. (Our heroes are attacked by a superior foe who must be pursued; but how far and at what cost?)
Read the Full Production Notes
Directed by: Peter Weir
Starring: Russell Crowe, Paul Bettany, Billy Boyd, James D’Arcy, Lee Ingleby, George Innes, Mark Lewis Jones, Chris Larkin
Screenplay: Peter Weir, John Collee, Patrick O’Brian
Production Design by: William Sandell
Cinematography by: Russell Boyd
Film Editing by: Lee Smith
Costume Design by: Wendy Stites
Set Decoration by: Robert Gould
Music by: Iva Davies, Christopher Gordon, Richard Tognetti
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense battle sequences, related images, brief language.
Studio: 20th Century Fox
elease Date: November 14, 2003
