23 Years Later, Russell Crowe's War Epic Is Still One of the Best Ever Made

While 2003’s Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World may not have won the same big awards as Russell Crowe’s 2000 vehicle Gladiator, it has since developed a reputation as one of the best period epic war movies of all time. Coming from Truman Show director Peter Weir and based on the historical novels of Patrick O’Brian, the movie follows a skirmish between ships of the French and British navies during the Napoleonic Wars (where “oceans are now battlefields”, as the movie’s iconic opening title says). Master and Commander’s great strength is its balance of massive war scenes with an immersive and realistic procedural sensibility, placing you directly on a British man-of-war alongside clashing personalities and grisly violence. Rather than a simple action movie, it is also a story of the complex relationship between Captain Aubrey (Crowe) and the ship surgeon Maturin (Paul Bettany).