tomsview Although this is a well-made film, you have to wonder why it was thought "The Breaking Point" could be bettered. However it gave Audie Murphy an opportunity to expand his range in a non-Western role.Audie plays Sam Martin who runs a charter boat out of the Florida Keys. It's the only film version that is set in the location of Hemingway's novel. Sam's business is in trouble, and he undertakes some illegal trips to Cuba running guns for Hannigan, an affable, but ruthless businessman played by Eddie Albert - proving that a charming villain is always more effective than a straight-out evil one.Sam is married and resists the not overly strenuous advances of Hannigan's mistress Eva (Gita Hall). Gita was underutilised here, she looked blonde, cool and interesting; a missed opportunity really, it was this relationship that created much of the tension in "The Breaking Point".Eventually it ends with bullet holes in much of the boat and most of the protagonists.I still find Audie Murphy a fascinating screen presence. Film allowed us to stare eyeball to eyeball into the face that was about the last thing 250 of his country's enemies ever saw. Occasionally we see interviews with war heroes, but the movies gave us an intimate acquaintance with this one.He was a complex guy and not universally liked, some thought him dangerous; he probably was. I once read "No Name on the Bullet", Don Graham's biography of Audie Murphy. Graham interviewed many people who knew him throughout his life and shed light on some of his military exploits beyond what was depicted in "To Hell and Back". Graham tells how Audie often went on solo missions to hunt down German snipers. It took nerve and skill, forged as a youth in the Depression when he hunted food for his family - one bullet, one kill.In "The Gun Runners", Audie is tightly controlled showing little emotion. He didn't change much from film to film, but maybe his movies reflected that iron self-control that enabled a man to stand on a burning tank destroyer firing a machine gun for an hour, holding off scores of the enemy.But that was all a long time ago and possibly a lot of people aren't interested in the stars in that way, simply demanding that the drama hold their attention. I would say "The Gun Runners" does that pretty well. I like the ending, which leaves us with a touch of doubt. It's a very watchable film on a number of levels.

gavin6942 A remake of "To Have and Have Not" based on the Hemingway short story. The plot is reset to the early days of the Cuban revolution. A charter boat skipper (Audie Murphy) gets entangled in gunrunning scheme to get money to pay off debts.Director Don Siegel may be the third person to tackle this tale, but he is not working fro ma dry well. By updating the story to involve the Cuban Revolution (before its success), the film takes on new life and now works as not only a great story but something of a historical document. Assisting Cuban rebels in 1958 may have had a very different sense at the time than it does today after fifty-plus years of Castro.This was the first feature from the fledgling Seven Arts Productions, before they went on to make "The Misfits" (1961), "Lolita" (1962), and several others, including a large number of co-productions with Hammer films.

mark.waltz This being the third version of Ernest Hemmingway's novel "To Have and Have Not", it is updated to the Florida Keys of the late 50's where a revolution is going on in Cuba and a gun smuggling ring wants the use of Sam Martin's boat. Audie Murphy, who played himself as a World War II hero in "To Hell and Back", now takes on Bogart's classic role yet is about as far from Bogart in charisma as Cuba is from democracy. There is also the case of the missing vixen, the Lauren Bacall role in the original. Now, Sam is married (to a fairly feisty woman played by Patricia Owens) and runs a fishing vessel that is about to be repossessed for non-payment of dock fees. Everett Sloane takes on the comic relief role of Sam's drunken sidekick (played in the original by Walter Brennan) and gives basically the same performance that Brennan did. Eddie Albert is the bad guy, out to control or fleece anybody he can, and is accompanied by his mistress (Gita Hall) who adds the only heat in the film.While the action sequences are very suspenseful, the film seems like something that was being done on television crime shows, only expanded to 93 minutes for the big screen. Albert's villain is a seemingly likable guy who goes off the nice guy wagon the moment he is confronted in Cuba by a soldier wanting to see his papers. He gives a truly memorable performance. Murphy tries his best, but there is no escaping what he was up against, and the women in the film are simply stereotypes, particularly Peggy Maley as the drunk at the bar. Gita Hall as Albert's mistress takes the role played by Dolores Moran in the original and makes it appear more important than it is.

zardoz-13 World War II's most decorated hero Audie Murphy recreates the Harry Morgan role that Humphrey Bogart originated in director Howard Hawks' "To Have and Have Not" as a Florida Key West charter boat skipper who finds himself caught between a rock and a hard place with villainous arms smugglers. Clocking in at a trim 83 minutes, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" director Don Siegel's "The Gun Runners" qualifies as a straightforward, no-nonsense, apolitical, maritime melodrama about a hard luck skipper who is literally living on a borrowed time. As Sam Martin, Murphy is so destitute that he hasn't been able to make a boat payment in three months, and the man who pumps his boat fuel hovers around him greedily in anticipation of getting his long overdue money. Nevertheless, despite these trials and tribulations, Sam enjoys a good life. He is his own boss, and he is married happily to Lucy Martin (Patricia Owens of "The Law and Jake Wade"), and he doesn't have a dishonest bone in his body.Siegel's film isn't half as good as either Hawks' classic or director Michael Curtiz's remake "The Breaking Point" with John Garfield, but it is still an interesting film, competently made, without flashy effects or thematic pretensions. The characters constitute a motley bunch, but the level of corruption in "The Gun Runners" is nothing compared to an earlier Siegel thriller "The Line-Up." "The Gun Runners" suffers from contrivance, but the narrative generates some suspense. The cast is stellar with Eddie Albert as a despicable villain, backed up by Richard Jaeckel. This United Artists theatrical release differs substantially from the Hawks' original and the Curtiz remake. Scenarists Daniel Mainwaring of "Out of the Past" and Paul Monash of "Salem's Lot" have altered several scenes and characters. Like the previous big-screen adaptations, however, "The Gun Runners" jettisons the chief complication in the relentlessly depressing Hemingway novel. Ostensibly, Sam doesn't lose an arm like his literary counterpart and he doesn't die in a gunfight aboard his charter boat with bank robbers.Like the earlier outings, "The Gun Runners" opens with our hero losing a fishing rod and line when a tourist lets a marlin run off with it. Peterson (John Harding of "The Joker is Wild") has spent ten days out on Sam's charter boat and he has had rotten luck. The last day out he hooks into a big one, but he fails to follow Sam's suggestion about handling the fishing rod and he loses it. In the original, the same character with a different name tried to skip out of Bogart, but he got caught in a cross-fire as Cuban authorities tried to round up revolutionaries. "The Gun Runners" is set in the days before the botched Cuban revolution and Peterson here never pays his bill. The authorities catch up with this bad check writer who has been kiting checks galores and Sam doesn't get his money. This bad luck frustrates Arnold (Jack Elam of "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral") because he was counting on Sam to pay him off. Along comes a happy-go-lucky fellow Hanagan (Eddie Albert of "Attack") who wants to rent Sam's boat. Eventually, Hanagan tells Sam that he wants to go to Cuba. Sam is already leary of Cuba and Cubans. Cuban revolutionaries have tried, as they did in the earlier versions, to charter Sam's boat for subversive activities against the government. In fact, the revolutionaries kill a cop when they try to persuade Sam to join their cause. Sam wants nothing to do with the revolutionaries. Like the other versions, Sam has a deckhand, a rummy named Harvey (Everett Sloane of "Citizen Kane"), who interferes in everything that Sam does. One character asks Sam why he doesn't get rid of Harvey and stop worrying about taking care of the guy. Sam replies that Harvey believes that he is taking care of him.Destitute for money, Sam agrees to land Hanagan and his girlfriend in Havana for an evening despite not having proper papers. Hanagan makes a deal with the revolutionaries to deliver weapons to them and he pulls Sam into the scheme. Sam learns too late that Hanagan has bought the note of his boat so Sam will have to take Hanagan back to Cuba to conclude their arms deal. Hanagan brings aboard a Cuban revolutionary who is supposed to take them to a rendezvous where they will exchange the money for the guns. The revolutionary learns too late that Hanagan had planned to double-cross him and a gunfight erupts on Sam's boat. Hanagan and his henchmen as well as the Cuban die and Sam catches a slug. Luckily for Sam, Harvey remained concealed aboard the charter boat and pilots it back to Key West. Harvey has iron-clad faith in Sam and Sam's moral values. "I knew you couldn't do it, Sam. I knew it. You know why? Because like I told Arnold, a man can't go bad if it ain't in him to go bad. And it ain't in you, Sam. Even if you tried it." Again, the performances are all good and Sloane is really good, but he doesn't surpass Walter Brennan in the original. Siegel maintains enough tension throughout the action, but he allows his protagonist to romance his wife and spend some time with the other characters at Key West.