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However, it's definitely not anything that "moved" me either. This may be one of the few absurdly misleading trailers in the wrong direction -- why show all that boring drama when most of the movie is non-stop action? Three minutes into the film, the first shot is fired. AND this is by far the bloodiest PG-13 movie I've ever seen. Hell, it was far bloodier than "Open Range," and that got an R for violence alone. I don't understand how they got a PG- 13 -- several scenes actually made me wince (like when the doctor operates on himself -- that was just messed up). Quite realistic (although most of the hand-to-hand combat is, much like Crowe's "Gladiator" war scenes, too chaotic to amount to anything), with very little CGI (to answer Sf's question below). Indeed, in some ways this movie was one of my screenplays brought to life -- they used numerous elements from it. So that's good to know that my ideas work. But bad for originality purposes! Also bad for budget purposes. Anytime a movie is filmed entirely on water (there's about 2 scenes not on water), the budget gets out of hand, no matter how simplistic it is, and this story is pretty darn simplistic. Remember "Titanic"? "Waterworld"? "Perfect Storm"? (Actually, the CGI waves that HAD to be done in this movie have come a long way since the fake-looking crap in "Perfect Storm." Bravo!)
Anyway, certainly not as good as most of Weir's other movies ("Dead Poets Society," "Truman Show"), but my main fear, that I was going to be bored, was never realized. I probably would be if I saw it a second time all the way through, though. 7, maybe 7.5 out of 10. And "Pirates of the Caribbean" is better on several different levels, though it's kind of difficult to directly compare them considering one is clearly an action-drama while the other is clearly an action-comedy. One last thing: Bettany was definitely the best actor here. Crowe was simply Maximus again. Billy Boyd doesn't do as much as he did "LOTR," though he is in the entire movie.
Interesting that this movie is based on the 10th in the "Master & Commander" series (there are 20 in total, and this movie did indeed end semi-conclusively, so it had "sequel" written all over it). I wonder why they didn't start with #1. Also, it's interesting that an important aspect of Bettany's character (according to what I've read) doesn't really come to light in this movie...
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