As newspaper freebies go this isn't bad but over and above any entertainment value is the fascination with the rip-off and crude attempts at movie subtlety; they producers seem to think that by changing the war from the 1st to the second, changing the Continent from Africa to South America and changing a cockney to an Irishman and a missionary to a doctor no one is going to spot that we're talking African Queen here with a soupcon of Moby Dick for good measure. There are, of course, other minor differences; in The African Queen it is the missionary Katie Hepburn who wants to destroy the German ship and has to convince Bogie's Charlie Allnut to go along with it whilst here it is Murphy (Peter O'Toole) as single minded as Ahab in his quest for the White whale, who is obsessed with destroying the German ship and Sian Phillips doctor who is against it from the first. Another modification is to meld the Missionary of The African Queen into Sian Phillip's doctor and Philippe Noiret's general factotum and to throw us off the scent by having O'Toole initially attempt to bomb the submarine from a seaplane he has found, rebuilt and learned to fly. Only when this fails does he resort to ramming it a la African Queen style. For all that it's a gripping enough tale in the best tradition of Boy's Own Paper and both O'Toole and Noiret turn in fine performances. I haven't read the novel by Max Catto, a third-rate writer who successfully sold several of his novels to Hollywood - Fire Down Below, Trapeze, The Devil At Four O'Clock etc and it may well have been him who ripped off C.S. Forrester's superior work but that aside this remains a decent enough divertissement.
Review of Murphy's War
