In theaters

MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD, directed by Peter Weir, written by Weir and John Collee, 140 minutes, rated PG-13.

This time out, it’s safe to believe the hype.

“Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,” which director Peter Weir and screenwriter John Collee based on the first and 10th novels in Patrick O’Brian’s 20-volume set chronicling the Napoleonic Wars, is every bit as smart and as rousing as its promotional campaign boasts.

Backed by a $135 million budget – the lot of which fills the screen, but never garishly – this big, satisfying seafaring tale set in 1805 shrewdly doesn’t romanticize the times it depicts.

That decision proves one of the film’s strongest selling points, especially given today’s increasing tendency by Hollywood to romanticize the past into a shape it never had.

Unlike some contemporary directors who mistakenly believe the word “epic” can’t apply to a film that runs less than three hours, Weir knows better. He understands that what matters when crafting an epic are the details, the characters and the relationships they share.

Here, all of those qualities are carefully tended to in a movie whose 140-minute running time never feels padded or, for that matter, rushed.

In the film, Russell Crowe, now more than ever channeling the sort of raw, unpredictable intensity of a young Richard Burton or Marlon Brando, gives a rich, mesmerizing performance as the complex British Capt. “Lucky” Jack Aubrey.

Thick and muscled, his face like a catcher’s mitt and his eyes revealing all the troubles and joys of life at sea, Aubrey finds himself and his crew of the HMS Surprise ambushed in the film’s riveting opening moments.

It’s the larger, better-armed French ship, the Acheron, that sneaks through the fog to launch a surprise attack on the Surprise. Surviving the battle with most of his crew intact, Aubrey repairs the ship and decides to cut a swath of revenge across the sea.

For some of the men on board, this staunch, impulsive act of defiance lifts Aubrey higher into the potentially dangerous realm of deity. They love him for his rage and his passion, even though they know both could kill them in the end.

However, to his good friend Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany of “A Beautiful Mind”), a naturalist who does double duty as the ship’s surgeon and Aubrey’s conscience, this rush to vengeance against the French is considered reckless and sobering – a smashing connection to the present that can’t go ignored.

In the film’s final act, Aubrey finds his opportunity to strike back at the crew of the Acheron, but before Weir allows audiences the rush of another battle – and it is a rush – he gives them life aboard ship and on the Galapagos Islands. There, where flightless birds with stunted wings are unable to soar, the movie nevertheless finds a sense of freedom that balances the claustrophobia cinematographer Russell Boyd mines so memorably on the ship.

Thoughtful and absorbing, its expert supporting cast and extras adding color but not caricature, “Master and Commander” will move deservedly into port this February, where it will wage its next battle at the Academy Awards.

Grade: A

On video and DVD

WINGED MIGRATION, directed by Jacques Perrin, written by Perrin and Stephane Durand, 89 minutes, rated G.

Jacques Perrin’s “Winged Migration” – a documentary, of sorts, about the migration of nearly two dozen species of birds – is outstanding, an Academy Award-nominated effort from the director of 1996’s “Microcosmos” that offers something for all audiences, not just those who love birds.

Shot over the course of fours years on all seven continents by a crew of 450, including 14 cinematographers and 17 pilots flying anything from hot-air balloons to custom-designed airplanes, the film is filled with scenes of such breathtaking awe and stomach-turning chills, it easily could go head-to-head with the best of any season’s Pentium-charged lot.

To be sure, for sheer kicks, it’s tough to match the showy hustle of the greater sage grouse, which could be called the Mae West of the bird world.

Likewise, you’d be hard-pressed to find a scene more haunting than “Migration’s” scores of rock crabs overcoming a bird with a broken wing and then methodically plucking it bare. It’s as if Hitchcock, standing just offscreen, were encouraging them.

For the most part, it’s capturing beauty – not death – that “Migration” has on its mind. With only the briefest of narration given by Perrin, the film provides the ultimate bird’s-eye view, soaring alongside these birds – which were trained from birth to accept Perrin and his crew – as they sweep the globe in search of food.

Aligned in symmetry, their necks extended like exclamation points, they are driven to destinations that can span an astonishing 12,500 miles, as is the case with the Arctic tern, which somehow travels twice a year from the Arctic to Antarctica.

It’s that often perilous journey, boosted by the world as its backdrop and hindered at seemingly every turn by man and his quest to hunt or destroy the environment, that makes “Winged Migration” the video and DVD to see this week.

Grade: A

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, Thursdays at 5:30 p.m. on WLBZ 2 and WCSH 6, and are archived on RottenTomatoes.com. He may be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.