Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003) on Netflix
PG-1320032h 18mActionAdventureDrama
During the Napoleonic Wars, French privateer Acheron ambushes HMS Surprise off Brazil. Captain Jack Aubrey refuses to sail home, repairs his frigate at sea, and takes his crew in pursuit.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb7.5/10259,539 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes85%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1805, the French privateer Acheron surprises the British frigate HMS Surprise off Brazil, leaving the ship badly damaged. Rather than return to port, Captain Jack Aubrey keeps his crew at sea for repairs and then sets out after the enemy. A second clash follows, and the Surprise escapes by a decoy raft. Aubrey sails south to keep Acheron from attacking British whalers, aiming for the Galápagos Islands. He has promised the ship's surgeon, Stephen Maturin, time to explore the islands' plants and animals. When survivors from a burned British whaler are rescued, Aubrey chooses to continue the chase, a decision that frustrates Maturin, who wants the promised stop. The chase carries the Surprise across two oceans.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Master and Commander was the first non-documentary film to shoot on location in the Galápagos, with filming there running from June to November 2002.
- For the sound of the wind as the ship rounds Cape Horn, King rigged a wooden frame with a thousand feet of line in the back of a pickup truck, drove it at 70 mph into a 30 knot wind and modulated the result with barbecue and refrigerator grills.
- King worked with the film's lead historical consultant Gordon Laco, who found Michigan collectors with a 24-pounder and a 12-pounder cannon. They recorded the guns at a National Guard base, with microphones by the cannon and 300 yards downrange to catch the shrieking of chain shot overhead.
- Richard Tognetti, who scored the film, taught Crowe to play the violin because Aubrey plays alongside Maturin's cello. Crowe bought the instrument himself, an 1890 violin by the Italian maker Leandro Bisiach that sold at auction in 2018 for US$104,000.
- The film is set in 1805 during the Napoleonic Wars rather than the War of 1812. The historian Cathy Schultz claimed the filmmakers thought American audiences might not want to see Americans as the villains, an assertion strongly disputed by 20th Century Fox chief executive Tom Rothman.
- In trying to find men who looked as though they were from the 19th century, Weir recruited many of the film's extras from Poland.
- The fantasy author Naomi Novik credits her alternative history series Temeraire, in which dragons fight in the Napoleonic Wars, to a naval adventure phase set off by watching Master and Commander and then reading the Aubrey-Maturin books.
- The film was a personal project of the 20th Century Fox executive Tom Rothman, who recruited Weir to direct it.
