A quaint, small-budget film should be expected to make an audience think, reflect, ruminate. When a $130 million epic is splashed up on the screen, the expectation is merely that it entertains. “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” certainly entertains and, while it hardly makes any highbrow, world-changing observations, it is not without its thoughtful side.

Captain Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe, “A Beautiful Mind”) commands The Surprise, a British warship engaged against Napoleonic forces early in the 19th century. Crowe takes a potentially simple, stoic role and, unlike his lame-but-award-winning “Gladiator” performance, brings convincing life to it.

The story revolves around his cat-and-mouse pursuit of a cunningly commanded and militarily superior French vessel in the waters surrounding South America. But his real foil in the film is not his French adversary, but rather his ship’s doctor, played by “A Beautiful Mind” co-star Paul Bettany.

The doctor is Aubrey’s friend and confidant, but also represents the development of humanitarian scientific research, as contrasted with Crowe’s duty-bound, militaristic worldview. Despite good performances, this contrast is driven home with no subtlety as The Surprise finds itself at the Galapagos Islands, decades before Darwin. The script waves huge red flags of prescience, never sure the audience will “get it.”

Still, the relationship is interesting and the acting good enough to overshadow some dubious moments, particularly some suspect string duets and self-surgery.

Surgery actually plays a significant role in the film, with some scenes resembling a Learning Channel program on early 19th century medicine. This serves to drag the audience right into the utterly joyless life onboard the era’s war vessels.

“Master and Commander”‘s finest accomplishment is its success at placing us viscerally inside The Surprise. The visual element is effective, but what makes it convincing is the film’s sound. While a standard “epic” soundtrack adds superfluous melodrama, the sound effects themselves are perfectly omnipresent. The waves, the creaking of the beams and the wind all put us in the dank, cramped bowels of the ship, or expose us on the weather-battered deck.

The cinematography is engrossing and only fails during battle scenes, when the confusion and anarchy of combat prevent the audience from quite knowing who’s killing whom.

A huge digression that cuts through the middle of the film is the other main concern. In need of a distraction to make the film something other than an elaborate chase scene, there is a very literal interruption in the action as The Surprise is stranded by stilled wind and maritime superstition casts a spineless officer (Ian Mercer, in his debut) as the scapegoat.

Though the segment illuminates more fully the life and mentality of the seaman of the day, it interrupts the flow of the film completely and ends up seeming unnecessary.

This may be part of the danger of adapting a movie from multiple sources. Pieces of the script and plot are taken from different episodes in the twenty-book series by late author Patrick O’Brian. To focus on one novel might have seemed limiting and would have presumed that sequels would follow. Nonetheless, the possibility for sequels now has been hindered by mixing and matching the source material.

Director Peter Weir (“Dead Poets Society”) still handles the material well and creates a vivid impression of his subject matter. He manages to evoke our sympathy for the British sailors even while demonstrating their arrogant nationalism, which seems distasteful to modern sensibilities.

The film does become somewhat pedantic when trying to do more than it has to; letting a contemporary audience witness a realistic portrayal of an archaic lifestyle evokes a reaction without the need to overillustrate. But Weir’s concern for detail and depth is overall a good thing. It makes for a great-looking movie that may inform some, but will entertain most.

Grade A/B