I thought Master and Commander was great. I'm not a huge Russel Crowe fan and I expected this movie to be mindless and barbaric, but it was excellent, well acted and smart. Funny and real too. I was impressed with Russel's performance, I thought he was going to be a macho pri*ck, but instead he was super cool and there were a lot of little kids who actually fought in battle, it was awesome! This one kid get's his arm amputated while he's wide awake and takes it like a man and then he commands a battle squada and he was like ten years old.