filmalamosa I picked this movie out because Don Siegel never produces garbage in fact it is almost guaranteed quality what ever the budget...and this movie has a B grade budget.Audie Murphy and Eddie Albert star in this 1958 rendition of Hemingway's To Have and Have Not. It is an intelligent well filmed maritime adventure. Eddie Murphy is superb as the charming villain--I have never seen a better one. Audie Murphy is boyishly handsome and earnest as the hard up boat captain.Well worth the watch. No politically correct baggage or tiresome social messages just action and gun running to Cuba.RECOMMEND

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.

verbusen I won't remember any lines or scenes from this film like I do from the Bogart film version of this Hemingway tale, but this is a decent film and worth watching for Audie Murphy and Don Siegal fans. I actually find this version more accessible for younger viewers as I feel that the Bogart version is chock full of clichés and it's also very drawn out, IMHO. This version because it was made in the late 50's can be related to a lot more then a film from the 40's, mostly because of the lack of street slang used in this version that in the Bogart film is outdated and forgotten. It's worth watching Murphy as the law breaker, he always had such a young looking average man's face, he will never pull the weight of a Bogart, but for me it's refreshing to watch as he looks very vulnerable, much more so then a Bogart is able to come across. I was able to follow this version a lot better as it was pretty straight, with the Bogart 40's films (and a lot of Noir from that time) they took an extra turn or two to add to the suspense but also could get kind of confusing and drawn out. Everett Sloane plays the rummy, and for me he did a great job. I'm sure that Walter Brennan has a ton of fans and probably won or got a nomination for his rummy role in the Bogart version, but for me he was annoying as all get out, so much so that because of To Have And Have Not, I cringe whenever I see him in a film thinking of that way over the top role he played. Eddie Albert has a decent bad guy role, and this may be one of his first as the villain although his career goes way back before this so I don't know, but his condescending villain in such films as The Longest Yard is displayed fully here. Jack Elam and Richard Jaeckel have bit parts that do nothing much for their resumes, and Robert Phillips another henchman on the ending scene is recognizable in the Star Trek pilot "The Meangerie" talking about the dancing green Orion slave women's sexual prowess with Captain Pike, as well as a pretty decent role in another Don Siegal movie, The Killers (one of my favorites). All in all it's a straight forward crime film about people that get drawn into crime during hard times. Murphy has nothing to be ashamed of in this film, and I rate it a 7 of 10 and worth watching.

mackjay2 If we compare Don Siegel's 1958 version of Hemingway's "To Have and Have Not" to the two earlier film adaptations, it may suffer in a few ways, but it's far from a complete loss. Siegel directs Daniel Mainwaring's adaptation here and it's a solid entry in the B movie genre. Perhaps more solid than many, because it allows plenty of time for the development of the main characters and because it has intelligence and a sense of humor. The casting of Audie Murphy is just about inspired. In complete contrast to gruff Bogart and volatile John Garfield, Murphy brings his own brand of quiet, brooding containment. This is a pretty convincing characterization coming from an actor whose acting record is spotty between this film and his screen debut in John Huston's RED BADGE OF COURAGE, seven years earlier. It had seemed that Murphy would never truly live up to his sublime first appearance in that great film. Saddled (all puns intended) with mostly mediocre, if entertaining, material in the intervening years, Murphy must have appreciated this chance to show a range and depth that even his fans may not have expected. Murphy rises to every dramatic occasion in this film, from a convincingly physical, erotic relationship with wife Patricia Owens (in the same year she screamed in multiple images for THE FLY), to the high drama aboard ship in the film's climax. If this film remains unavailable for general viewers, it's a disservice to Murphy as an actor. Along for the ride are some supporting actors who tend to garner the tepid terms "stalwart" or "dependable". But Everett Sloane, Jack Elam and Richard Jaeckel bring hefty conviction to this project. Elam only has two scenes, but he makes us remember he was in the movie. And Sloane, taking the role so indelibly played by Juano Hernandez in THE BREAKING POINT (1950) with Garfield, does away with any doubt about his casting in this role. As the villain Hanagan, we have Eddie Albert. In case anyone hadn't already known it, Albert was an extremely good dramatic actor. His usual affability is used in this role, and set aside when necessary, to make a very believable criminal. The film was shot on the California coast, and we are asked to believe one sequence takes place in Cuba. It all works just fine. Siegel directs with his usual economy and sense of drama, making every scene count. This is a neglected, if minor, movie gem that deserves to be seen every now and then to remind us how satisfying a mid-budget Hollywood movie could be.