Master and Commander follows the HMS Surprise set in the nineteenth century. About a quarter of the movie is concerned with a documentary aspect of the life of the time. The asides about the sailors was only once or twice out of place, most of the time it flowed beautifully with the movie. The rest of the time is the story of one captain's Ahab-ian obsession with capturing an enemy's. The movie rarely delved into outright violence, and what gore it did encounter was mostly off screen and up to the viewer's imagination.

In the end, it's a great movie that I highly recommend. I'm off to read the book now to see how it compares.