[rosconey]

just finished-yawn
nothing special,dont get me wrong its not bad -its just not a wow did you see that type of movie
cinematography was great ,acting ok, easy to follow because it had no pace-good graphics and sound track.
i think they missed the boat  

[Rob Babcock]

I'll be picking this one up in a few hours.  As long as I've been looking forward to it, I hope I end up liking it.  I have to give it a shot, though- there just aren't that many period-type movies each year.  

[byteme]

I'll be intrested in your review.  I'm debating a purchase vs. waiting until it's on HBO.  I'm leaning towards HBO.  My wife is starting to get agitated about the 450 dvds we have...so now I can only purchase sure things.

[Smeggy]

I actually enjoyed this quite a bit and Amazon should be delivering mine soon. Though not as realistically portrayed as Pirates of the Carribean   it was still very much worth my time. I think one of the main things that made me smile at the end was the fact that there was no female love interest role in it. About friggin' time too. I'm sick to death of contrived romances in places they don't belong.

[pjchappy]

I saw it a few weeks ago on DVD       . . .I really liked it.

p

[Rob Babcock]

Well, I loved it!  I did get the WOW from it.  Aside from a VERY soft picture, I have no complaints.  The sound was great, and as a movie I thought is was fantastic.  Sure, from a plot standpoint it was strictly a cat & mouse game at sea, but the cunning and audacity of both captains was very entertaining.

Now I wish I'd have bought the $30 edition; I'll have to see what all it ads.

I guess you could hold out for it on HBO, but it's as sure a purchase as I've made in ages.  

[rosconey]

what -
but the cunning and audacity of both captains was very entertaining.

what did they do to make the other captain legit,nothing.
just because lucky jack said he was  

they didnt portray the other captain as a threat ,at least to me.
 other than a better boat they didnt do a heck of alot.


it did have a soft picture

[sdk]

Warning: if you haven't seen this flick, there are spoilers in this post so don't read it until you see the movie.

what did they do to make the other captain legit,nothing.
just because lucky jack said he was  

they didnt portray the other captain as a threat ,at least to me.
other than a better boat they didnt do a heck of alot.

Of course they portrayed the french captain as a threat. Just because they didn't show him, doesn't mean he wasn't a threat. In fact, his absense made his menace all the more mysterious. Was he a phantom? Or some a master seaman far beyond the english captian's capabilities? This question looms during the entire film and only adds to the drama. Even though the french captian wasn't there, he did a number of pivotal things in the story:

- He took the english captain by surprise in first attack
- He got behind the english boat in the second attack
- he out-witted the english captian by pretending to be the doctor - this is a beautiful pay-off to the english captain's ruse of disguising his ship as a whaler.

No the pace wasn't like a John Woo movie, but it wasn't supposed to be. I think the writers tried to capture the monotony of being on an english warship in the early 19th century.  But they also showed the danger in that life as well.

The battle scenes were the best I have scene for this genre. How many period battleship movies ever show grapeshot litterally ripping both boats and men to pieces? And guess what? This is how it really happened. I think the story tried to be truthful without all the hyped-up special effects. I found it totally refreshing. Thank god there are some directors who don't subscribe to the quick-cutting-5-shots-a-second-Jerry-Bruckheimer style of film making. Peter Weir took his time and developed a wonderful character in the English captian, a man torn between duty and the love for his men. This was a real story, like they used to make.

[Rob Babcock]

The French captain, while you don't see him til the end, is very cunning in his tactics, as sdk said.  He nearly "outjacked Jack" with the trick at the end.  I think the film portrays him as very cagey indeed, a good foe for Aubrey.  Sorry it didn't float your boat, rosconey, but I dug it.  No, it's not a frantically paced flick for the guys with 88 minute attention spans but a character study & (as far as I've been able to determine) a very faithful portrayal of life at sea in that era.

The movie pays attention to details that often get glossed over.  Again, the effects of the ball & shot is shown on the ship & crew, and we see the crew trying to get the Surprise seaworthy again after her first run in with the Acheron.  Seeing the work done to patch the hull and pump the water out of the ship, well, that's a level of detail that your Errol Flynn type movies gloss over.

Mostly I have to add that the movie is a lot of fun.  I'd urge anyone who's on the fence to give this one a shot.  I seriously doubt most will be disappointed.[/i]

[rosconey]

lets see-hes out looking for the frenchy ship, frenchy attacks him first -ok- he knows the frenchy is after him at this point yet gets caught again -why would he think frenchy was going to leave him alone, any leader worth a dam would have tried to kill them at that point, its a them or us thing, so whats his excuse.this is also suposed to make frenchy a great capt-why? hes just doing his job and he has the better ship so you kill the closest guy before you leave him alone- so he cant come up from behind.
i've never had command of any ship bigger than 30 feet, but dam if i couldnt out class that guy
.
i think the story was weak, thats all-its like spiderman,new starwars ect-entertaining but not a classic-not on par with the lotr series by any stretch.

[Rob Babcock]

Oh, sure YOU could outclass him- but that's not fair.  Your the ROSCONEY2000!    

[rosconey]

years ago a friend had a brother who was into early comp games(battle for europe)-
dont have a clue what it was called but i played one day and just kicked his ass-wasted out of my mind on good bud and he was stone cold sober, boy he got pissed , yelled and screamed i played before because there was no way i could beat him so easily not having ever played- his mom said it was because i lived it in a past life while he probably just stared at a fire and did nothing same as today

[Daniel]

I saw the flick when it came out and loved it.  Long before the movie came out I read every single one of the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey/Maturin books.  They are fantastic reads (all except the second, which is sort of an 18th century country manners piece set primarily on land).  I couldn't get enough of them.  They aren't potboilers.  They are quite literary actually, as well as being historically accurate.  The CS Forester Hornblower novels are comic books by comparison.