Master and Commander: the Far Side of the World has been advertised as a balls-out action movie; it seems like an unofficial sequel to Gladiator with cannonballs instead of lions. The truth is, although it stars Russell Crowe as a British sea captain named Lucky Jack Aubrey, it is as close to Gladiator as The Mask was to The Truman Show.

Setting sail in 1805, in the midst of the Napoleonic war, Aubrey is ordered to take his ship, the HMS Surprise, to the Pacific and prevent The Acheron, a French ship, from extending France’s dominion to the Americas.

The film’s lengthy title is an amalgamation of the two books by Aubrey’s chronicler Patrick O’Brian, Master and Commander and the Far Side of the World, that make up the epic narrative. Despite being a bit of a mouthful, the title perfectly fits the movie, as it is an examination of leadership in times of danger and strife and an exploration of the sailors’ reactions to being in a mysterious place which, to them, is the far side of the world.

Hopefully, the non-stop action flick advertising will bring in audiences that wouldn’t ordinarily go for the actual film, which is more of a rarity: although it has three action scenes, at the beginning, middle and end, most of the movie is focused on smaller, less dramatic moments. The heart of the movie is not the battles, but the relationship between Aubrey and Ship Surgeon Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany, Crowe’s imaginary roommate in A Beautiful Mind).

This character is initially somewhat frustrating, perpetually asking questions at crew dinners that seem designed purely to facilitate the explication of the complicated sea terms for the audience. As the movie progresses, however, this pitch-perfectly played character becomes harder not to appreciate. Far from being a simple audience surrogate, Maturin is just confused by the technical jargon. As far as I could tell from the exposition, Maturin had been drafted onto the Surprise and, though he has become good friends with Aubrey during his time aboard, he still is out of his element.

Luckily, the entire movie isn’t given over to the finer points of seafaring. The most enjoyable moments are the quietest, particularly the scenes in which Aubrey and Maturin play classical music together in the Captain’s cabin. After scenes of wartime devastation, these scenes are beautiful. Scenes like these are often just a device, intended to demonstrate the hero’s more complex nature: he is more than a brute, the screenwriters hope to demonstrate. In this case, however, Crowe handles these scenes skillfully enough that they don’t seem contrived; Aubrey becomes a real man rather than the caricature so common in Bruckheimer knock-off action fests.

Another crucial difference between Master and Commander and most $100 million action epics is director Peter Weir’s clear insistence on showing the consequences of war and creating a connection to the characters strong enough that the audience feels those consequences. Each of the big action sequences has many casualties that, without getting too gory, are explicitly shown; even some beloved characters are not spared. When Maturin and Aubrey have to make tough decisions, you feel their pain and the confusion, pain and anger of their crewmen. Between Master and Commander, The Truman Show and Witness, Peter Weir has proven himself to be one of the smartest populist directors working today.