John Aubrey is a captain for all winds. His bravery is seasoned by intelligence; his initiative is tempered by loyalty to the Crown and its naval legend Lord Nelson. Aubrey commands his frigate, the Surprise, with strength, not bravado, and an ease and rigor that win the respect of his men. He also has what any bunch of superstitious sailors needs in a boss: a nose for good fortune. They call him Lucky Jack. His nickname is a prayer to the fickle Fates that rule the sea, his presence a guarantee that the crew's lives are in the best hands.
The real Russell Crowe is not quite Aubrey, the unambiguously heroic fellow he plays in Peter Weir's splendidly bracing sea epic Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Sometimes, the actor comes off as a brute, a primitive: Crowe Magnon Man. So we gladly cede to others the honor of carousing or canoodling with him. We might lock up our daughters at his approach. We would not care to be within striking distance of his coiled wrath.
But then, we don't have to be. For a critic or a filmgoer, an actor's private life should be irrelevant to the art and glamour he can create onscreen. And there, alchemy occurs. Crowe is often magnificent: attractive, complex, subtle. Watching him slip inside a role is a matter not of forgiving but of forgetting all the tabloid baggage. The lout of a thousand headlines vanishes, and the superb movie actor appears magically in his place. When Crowe is at the helm of a movie, we're proud to sail with him.
He shares some of his gifts with other Australian-bred stars, from Nicole Kidman to Hugh Jackman, who have lately taken over Hollywood. They must hide within plain sight. Plain sound, rather: to suppress their native whine, they have to "act" every time they open their mouths. Yet like the rest of the world, the Aussies have been casing Hollywood movies since childhood. Because they know the territory, they can infiltrate an American character with a cat burglar's suaveness: entering without breaking.
But Crowe has something more than an agreeable presence and technical precision. He can convey inner strength, rage and desperation without ever pushing it. People see this power and think Brando. No doubt Crowe has done so too. (In an earlier incarnation he went by the name Russ Le Roq and recorded a single called I Want to Be like Marlon Brando.) He's muscular as well, and it's earned bulk, not the pretty-boy sculpture of the body builder. Like Brando, Crowe could play a biker, a dockworker, a mafioso or Stanley Kowalski.
One big difference: you won't hear Crowe screaming "Stella!" He rarely raises his voice in films. As the neo-Nazi skinhead in his 1992 attention snagger Romper Stomper, he achieves his most menacing effects with a whisper and reads a passage from Mein Kampf as if it were a sacred bedtime story. The tough cop he played in the 1997 L.A. Confidential is another soft-spoken type: in lieu of shouting, he tattoos his fist on a suspect's face, grabs a man's genitals. Never does he strut or preen or pace nervously, Pacino-style. There's no spillage of energy. The Sea of Crowe has a surface calm; rancor roils a few fathoms below.