The film was critically well received and garnered Weir the BAFTA Award for Best Direction. It was a moderate success at the box office, grossing $212 million worldwide. The film, which cost $150 million to make, was a co-production of 20th Century Fox, Miramax Films, Universal Pictures, and Samuel Goldwyn Films, and released on November 14, 2003. Filming took place on the open sea, on replica ships in the water tanks of Baja Studios, and on the Galápagos Islands. The film was a personal project of Fox executive Tom Rothman, who recruited Weir to helm the project. This is the second onscreen collaboration for Crowe and Bettany, both of whom previously co-starred in 2001’s A Beautiful Mind. The film stars Russell Crowe as Aubrey, captain in the Royal Navy, and Paul Bettany as Dr. The film's plot and characters are adapted from three novels in author Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey–Maturin series, which includes 20 completed novels of Jack Aubrey's naval career. Although it is a romance, it’s heavily coloured by the bleakness of the surrounding dystopia.Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is a 2003 American epic period war- drama film co-written, produced and directed by Peter Weir, set during the Napoleonic Wars.

Men toil in exchange for sex with the ship’s women the women in turn will only obtain their freedom once they’ve had enough sex to pay off their debts.Īs you can imagine, there are a lot of dark – even demoralising – themes in the novel. To keep his community going, however, he effectively runs a prostitution ring. She was essentially sold into sexual slavery by her companion, and is now the property of Aaron, a man who’s carved out a little niche of relative peace on an abandoned cruise ship.

Women are in short supply, many having been sexually assaulted and murdered by the gangs of roving, lawless men. In Cain’s post-apocalyptic world, some unnamed moron of a US President started a nuclear war that’s devastated the landscape. However, this particular novel is a standalone, and it fits the dystopian romance bill in a deliciously creepy way. This – plus the length of time she leaves in between installments, and their high cost:length ratio – means I’ve stopped recommending many of her books. Cain is notoriously poor at finishing series only one of her many series has actually been completed, and even then the ending was left open, so she could continue the characters’ storyline in a sequel series.

Land of the beautiful dead r lee smith