CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!

Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

tomsview Although this is a well-made film, you have to wonder why it was thought "The Breaking Point" could be bettered. However it gave Audie Murphy an opportunity to expand his range in a non-Western role.Audie plays Sam Martin who runs a charter boat out of the Florida Keys. It's the only film version that is set in the location of Hemingway's novel. Sam's business is in trouble, and he undertakes some illegal trips to Cuba running guns for Hannigan, an affable, but ruthless businessman played by Eddie Albert - proving that a charming villain is always more effective than a straight-out evil one.Sam is married and resists the not overly strenuous advances of Hannigan's mistress Eva (Gita Hall). Gita was underutilised here, she looked blonde, cool and interesting; a missed opportunity really, it was this relationship that created much of the tension in "The Breaking Point".Eventually it ends with bullet holes in much of the boat and most of the protagonists.I still find Audie Murphy a fascinating screen presence. Film allowed us to stare eyeball to eyeball into the face that was about the last thing 250 of his country's enemies ever saw. Occasionally we see interviews with war heroes, but the movies gave us an intimate acquaintance with this one.He was a complex guy and not universally liked, some thought him dangerous; he probably was. I once read "No Name on the Bullet", Don Graham's biography of Audie Murphy. Graham interviewed many people who knew him throughout his life and shed light on some of his military exploits beyond what was depicted in "To Hell and Back". Graham tells how Audie often went on solo missions to hunt down German snipers. It took nerve and skill, forged as a youth in the Depression when he hunted food for his family - one bullet, one kill.In "The Gun Runners", Audie is tightly controlled showing little emotion. He didn't change much from film to film, but maybe his movies reflected that iron self-control that enabled a man to stand on a burning tank destroyer firing a machine gun for an hour, holding off scores of the enemy.But that was all a long time ago and possibly a lot of people aren't interested in the stars in that way, simply demanding that the drama hold their attention. I would say "The Gun Runners" does that pretty well. I like the ending, which leaves us with a touch of doubt. It's a very watchable film on a number of levels.

gavin6942 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.

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.

JohnHowardReid It puzzles me why producer Clarence Greene and Seven Arts thought the public would go for yet another re-telling of Hemingway's "To Have and Have Not" when both the Bogart-Bacall and Garfield-Neal versions are so widely regarded as definitive. But here it is, and I must admit that Mainwaring and Monash have added a few more suspenseful wrinkles to the screenplay and that Audie Murphy does surprisingly well by the Bogart-Garfield role. The other players are equally adept, particularly Eddie Albert as the chillingly convincing heavy and the lovely Gita Hall (in the first of only two movies, alas). And it's always good to see players like Richard Jaeckel, Herb Vigran and Jack Elam in roles that allow them to display their talents.Beautifully photographed by Hal Mohr on actual Key West locations, the movie also gives director Don Siegel some splendid action opportunities which he handles in his usual dramatic style, although the climax itself seems somewhat truncated by comparison with the preceding versions.