movie review: quicks the word and sharp's the action, boys

master and commander was in short the best Star Trek movie there ever was. huh? you ask. Well not only was the Star Trek partially based on the Hornblower series, the movie plot fits pretty well to a Star Trek movie plot: an outmatched, outgunned crew winning the day based on guile and pluckiness, but only after near and utter distaster. There's even a doctor-captain relationship and of course lots of questions of loyalty and duty. It's all about leadership.

The enemy captain is a little less of a villain though and there is an undertone ( however slight ) that this more about pride and lust for battle than it is Just Cause.

The nice surprise is the trip to the Galapagos Islands and a fanciful notion that the Doctor, a naturalist on the side, is near on the cusp of Evolutionary thoughts as Darwin, had he but a moment longer on the islands.

Anyway, it's a stirring, if a perhaps overly gorey (several graphic operations being performed, not to mention all the hacky slashy bits), depiction of the 18th and 19th century high seas.