When Murphy is taxiing the Amphibian out for the first time, he is an absolute novice and does not know how to take off.
In making long taxi runs with the aircraft his cockpit is inundated with spray from the river yet in a closeup of Murphy's face, he is bone dry.
Near the end of WW2, a U-boat attack on the Orinoco River, Venezuela, leaves only one survivor, an Irish seaman (Peter O'Toole). After recovering at a Quaker mission, he intends on finding the Germans responsible and wiping them off the face of the Earth.
It is far to be an ordinary war film. Because not the war is the axis in this case , but only a pretext.
"Murphy's War" is based on a 1969 novel by English novelist and playwright Max Catto. It's a fictitious story of war action, war crimes, obsession and revenge in the closing days of World War II.
In the last days of the second world war a German U-Boat sinks a British merchant ship on the Orinoco river . As the survivors flounder in the river they are massacred by the Germans .
Here it is, almost a decade after O'Toole's glory in (perhaps Great Britain's greatest director) David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962). That is truly an epic film, with a stunning cast, and a running time of almost 4 hours (including the epilogue, intermission and prologue).
I saw this film first time round and, going by the date is was made, I must have been about seven years old. Our cinema in Lochgelly was rather lax about age restrictions.
It's hard to consider this 1971 film anything more than a cautionary tale. Simply put as a movie there's just not much here.
If you look closely and are somewhat familiar with the silhouette of a WW II German submarine you will notice the wrong conning tower. This conning tower is of a RN submarine to which an aft gun platform has been added.
I first saw this film in the mid-to-late 1970's when it aired on television. Before the VCR made movies readily available, my older brother and I always made a point to catch this movie whenever it aired - such a great combination of scenery, machinery, revenge; all with very realistic acting, sets, and dialog.
