When I saw Master and Commander, Peter Weir’s fine adaptation of two of Patrick O’Brian’s novels, upon its initial release in 2003, it was an interesting time. Russell Crowe, who played the swashbuckling protagonist Captain Jack Aubrey, was at his peak as a film star, coming off the successes of Gladiator, The Insider and A Beautiful Mind, and he excelled at a combination of Brando-esque machismo and something more indefinable; you could call it sensitivity, yearning or inner rage, and all three might be correct.
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