Laura Scott

As someone who considers the books to be required reading for anyone who loves literature, I may be biased, but I think this movie is wonderful, and feels very true to the books (which in turn are very true to the period). The books have received high accolades, but the movie (drawn from a storyline running through two of the books) has been vastly underrated. There are no women in this movie, which maybe is a reason it got overlooked at awards time. But this is a Peter Weir (Dead Poets Society, Witness, Picnic at Hanging Rock) film, a director with powerful command of dramatic tension, and who presents compelling and sharp action without fetishizing the violence. And a director who consistently delivers the true reason this movie is worth watching: wonderful performances of rich characters. Whether or not you like Russell Crowe, he turns in one of his best performances, as does Paul Bettany. And the rest of the cast is exceptional, including the children and teens. The movie is set in 1805, when England was at war with Napoleon. They've been long at sea, and after nearly being blown to bits in a surprise attack, they end up in a cat-and-mouse chase with a much larger French ship. The art direction and attention to details make you feel like you're peering through a window into the actual past. A typical Hollywood swashbuckling adventure this is not. But it's the characters who draw you in. Parts of the story are heartbreaking. Devastating. And yet the movie manages to repeatedly surprise. Discussions between characters range from engineering to friendship to duty and coping with failure, all the way to bad puns. And the different kinds of relationships between men (no, not sexual, you dirty-minded reader) are fascinating to me. Nuanced is how I would describe the script. My recommendation: Give this movie 10 minutes, and if you're not completely hooked by then, and invested in several of the characters, you can have my slice of pudding.