“A poster child for the kind of movies Hollywood doesn’t make anymore and a beacon of positive masculinity…If you kidnapped a hundred of Hollywood’s top minds and forced them to work around the clock, they could not engineer a more exquisite Dad Movie.” -Gabriella Paiella, GQ

April — 1805. Napoleon is master of Europe. Only the British fleet stands before him. Oceans are now battlefields.

A beautifully realized, atypically intimate action drama, Peter Weir’s Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World may not have set the box office on fire in its initial theatrical run, but it’s rightly become a memed-about modern classic of intelligent, sensitive action cinema. Based on two Napoleonic War-era adventure novels in author Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series, Master and Commander stars Russell Crowe stars as Captain Jack Aubrey, a high-seas adventurer who maintains a strong bond with ship-surgeon Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany). After conquering much of Europe already, Napoleon’s forces have set their sights on taking Britain, so Aubrey and the crew of his ship, the HMS Surprise, take to the Pacific to intercept any attacking ships from the French fleet. When Aubrey eyes a renegade French super-frigate, the Surprise pursues, leading to an adrenaline-charged chase through the distant reaches of the sea.