Absolutely brilliant

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

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Revolution (before its success), the film takes on new life and now works as not only a great story but something of a historical document.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.

It's too bad the budget was as low as it was, and that more care hadn't been invested in the casting, because this sticks closer to Hemingway's novel that the other, better-known versions like Howard Hawks'.As it is, it was not shot in Florida or Cuba, and when Captain Audy Murphy pulls his fishing boat into a Key West harbor it looks like nothing so much as Newport Beach, California, which is what it is.The print I saw was grainy and the filming lacking in any innovation. I know Don Siegel directed it and he could be a first-rate craftsman with no pretensions. Here, though, with the exception of Eddie Albert's evil character, nothing stands out.Audy Murphy was not much of an actor. He turned in an exceptional performance in "The Red Badge of Courage" but in all of his other work he seemed slightly embarrassed to be in front of a camera. His relationship with Everett Sloan as "the rummy" is without depth or understanding. Aside from Eddie Albert and his smiling, back-patting, treacherous depravity, none of the other characters shine. Even Albert's character is not the maniacal killer that Siegel grew so fond of later in his career. Albert only shoots one or two people, and he uses a short-barreled revolver, not Dirty Harry's 20 mm. canon.Patricia Owens is stunning in her modelesque way with her anthracite irises but she's there to provide Murphy's character with a home life, and too much screen time is given to her. The running time is short enough and the script could at least have had her remove some of her hampering outer garments to make up for the overabundance of her presence.Siegel's action scenes are always good, more brutal than what we usually run into, and the climax is no exception here. By today's standards, of course, it's tepid stuff; but then by today's standards, everything more than twenty years old pales.All in all, there's nothing at all memorable about this film. It could have been done twenty years earlier with B-list actors like Chester Morris or Stanley Clements or some other guy with a mustache and a contract.

***SPOILERS*** It's when non smoking drinking and gambling All-American boy Sam Martin, Audie Murphy, got hit by financial hard times like not being able to pay his bills that he turned to shady dealings with international gun runner Hanagan, Eddie Albert. It was Hanagan who wanted Sam, who knew the the treacherous waters that separates Cuba from the US mainland like the back of his hand, to sail his fishing boat into Havana Cuba that at the time, the Cuban Revaluation, was off-limits to American shipping. When there Hanagan without Sam's knowledge plans to unload hundreds of rifles machine guns and ammunition to the Cuban rebels fighting the Bistista Regime. With Sam a bit hesitant at first he agrees to sail both Hanagan and his Swedish girlfriend Eve, Gita Hall the former Miss Sweden 1952, to Cuba even if caught he risks not only losing his boat but ending up behind bars in a Cuban lock-up.What was to be a harmless night out partying in Havana turned into a night of murder when Hanagan shot and killed a Cuban policeman, for asking too many embarrassing questions, and cab driver, for knowing too much, before the evening was over. Back in Key West with his wife Lucy, Patricia Owens, Sam finds out from US Coast Guard Commander Welsh, Ted Jacques, about the murders in Havana and realizes that he unknowingly had a part in them! With a double murder rap hanging over his head and his beloved fishing boat about to be dispossessed by the local bank Sam has no choice to go along with Hanagan grand scheme to smuggle thousands of weapons into Cuba for the Cuban rebels lead by the incomparable and fearless "El Beardo" himself Fidel Castro!Being the back-stabbing and scheming swine that he is Hanagan had no intentions to go through with his deal in supplying the Cuban rebels with guns or anything else. All he wanted was their cash and then leave them out in the cold with crates of rocks and junk instead of the weapons that they paid him for. It was Sam's 1st mate the always drunk Harvey, Everett Slone, who in a rare moment of sobriety found out about Hanagan's plan and informed Sam about it.***SPOILER ALERT*** With Sam now knowing just what Hanagan and his hoods lead by Buzurki, Richard Jeackel, had in store for him as well as Cuban rebel leader Carlos Romero, Carlos Contreras, his only hope of surviving was to go along with the rat-fink killer until he lets his guard down and then go for the kill! That's if Hanagan and his boys don't start to suspect that Sam is on to them and end up killing him first!P.S Strange casting of Everett Slone as the drunken rummy and Sam's 1st mate Harvey. Slone knows for his parts as a sophisticate villain, like in "The Lady of Shanghai", and conniving and unscrupulous wheeler dealer, like in "Patterns", seemed a bit out of place in that role.

Ernest Hemingway's classic short story To Have And Have Not gets yet another remake, an independent production for Seven Arts that stars Audie Murphy taking the place Humphrey Bogart and John Garfield as Hemingway's iconoclastic fisherman/charter boat skipper.No Lauren Bacall like slinky low voiced siren to take our hero's mind off business. In fact Murphy is happily married to Patricia Owens. But while he has a happy home life he owes some big money around Key West. His boat isn't even completely paid for and the bank is breathing down his neck. Eddie Albert maybe the answer to his financial prayers. He wants to charter Murphy's boat for mysterious reasons for a trip to Cuba and remember this is 1958 and the Cuban government is rightly suspicious of strangers without proper clearance going to their island. In fact Albert is a gunrunner looking to sell to revolutionaries at a nice profit.The film takes no political sides as to whether it favors the Batista government or the Castro revolutionaries. All you gradually learn along with Murphy is that Albert is one ruthless individual and quite the user. Director Don Siegel shot this film on location in Newport Beach, California, curiously enough exactly where Michael Curtiz shot The Breaking Point, John Garfield's film of this story. Bogart's was done on the Warner Brothers back lot, none of them got anywhere near Papa Hemingway's beloved Caribbean waters. Siegel did keep the action going at a good clip.Audie Murphy showed a bit of versatility here as an actor, taking a break from the B westerns he was doing at Universal. But Eddie Albert who when he does play a villain does remarkably well as he did in The Longest Yard and Attack. One never thinks of him that way, his image is forever fixed with Green Acres, but he was a favorite of mine and his range never ceased to amaze me.The Gun Runners is your average B picture film about a controversial political issue in which it takes absolutely no sides.