Reading other comments I wasn't sure if we were talking about the same movie. Putting the record straight. The aircraft used in the film wasn't a Vought Kingfisher, it was a Grumman Duck. The river was the Orinoco in Venezuela, not the Amazon in Brazil. It flows into the Atlantic, not the Caribbean. Murphy was the sole survivor of a Royal Navy Fleet auxiliary, not a British submarine. Having said that, the basic plot of Murphy's War bears a striking resemblance to that of The African Queen but it doesn't come close to that classic. Nor does O'Toole's and Phillips' acting approach the magic of Bogart and Hepburn. I first saw Murphy's War (I had previously read Catto's novel) when it was released as a feature movie. Even then I wondered what possessed O'Toole to take it on. It wasn't a role well suited to him and that still shows many years later. Nor was the the regal Sian Phillips particularly convincing as a medical missionary. Having said that - and after revisiting Murphy's War - the movie has aged better than some and is worth watching if only for the flying sequences, the delightful performance of Phillipe Noiret and the marvellous panoramas of a South American river delta.
Review of Murphy's War
