HIS three previous films, Bottle Rocket, Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, have marked writer/director Wes Anderson out as an impressively idiosyncratic film-maker.

The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou confirms not only that Anderson is a wildly talented chap in a sea of film-making mediocrity but also that he can be infuriatingly indulgent, single-minded and fussy.

In short, if you liked his previous films, then The Life Aquatic will seem like manna from Heaven, but if you think that all films should be like the sort of stuff that, say, Vin Diesel turns out, then you'll more likely be baffled and irritated.

Actually, by the standards of his previous films, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou is positively action-packed, featuring not only modern-day pirates but also a shoot-out and even a chase, of sorts! Of course, these things are subservient to the clockwork precision of his film-making and the rich and strange blend of characters he so deftly brings together.

Bill Murray, who has worked with Anderson before in both Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, gives a pathos-filled performance to equal his turn in Lost In Translation as Steve Zissou, a washed up oceanographer very much along the lines of Jacques Cousteau.

In search of love, revenge and some sort of redemption, the imperious and egotistical Sissou sets sail for one last voyage in his ship The Belafonte, intent on tracking down and killing the, possibly imaginary, `jaguar shark' who ate his long-time professional partner Esteban.

Joining him on his Ahab-like voyage are not only such faithful crew-mates as the adoring German engineer Klaus Daimler (Willem Dafoe) and Pele de Santos (Seu George), whose speciality is crooning versions of David Bowie songs in Portuguese, and the perennially-topless script girl Anne-Marie Sakowitz (Robyn Cohen), but also some newer crew members.

They include an Air Kentucky pilot named Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson), who just might be his son, Jane Winslett-Richardson (Cate Blanchett), a mysterious, pregnant journalist, and the `bond company stooge' Bill Ubell (Bud Cort).

Significantly absent on this voyage, though, is Zissou's wife Eleanor (Anjelica Huston), who has left him for his arch-nemesis and rival oceanographer Alistair Hennessey (Jeff Goldblum).

This is a tale that teeters on the edge of fantasy but also, beneath its whimsical exterior, deals with some very human subjects.

You'll either love it or hate it but, if you think film-making should be about more than just Biff! Bang! Pow! and raking in the dollars, then you should at the very least applaud the fact that strange, personal films like The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou are getting made and, moreover, getting something like the publicity profile they deserve.