Unusual and exciting WW II story --

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	• Murphy's War [VHS] Peter O'Toole, Siân Phillips Paramount, 1998 average customer review:based on 24 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Good, Albeit Overblown.

When Murphy replies that his father made bombs for 'noble causes', and that is why he knows how to make them, we see what sort of allegory this early 1970's film was trying to make. This script is heavily influenced by the 'troubles' in Northern Ireland, and wars that've been fought over it. However, the writer isn't interested in showing us the psychology of occupation which would have brought about this trauma. The scriptwriter also isn't interested in showing what alternative Murphy should've pursued, or what his friendship with the British officer was based on. So we get long drawn out segments where Murphy drops amusing Irish turns of phrase. The action sequences are well shot, but they are not backed up by anything substantial in terms of character and dramatic complexity.

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a gem

Excellent. In a nutshell: merchant ship sunk at the mouth of the Orinoco river in Venezuela by German submarine during the closing days of WW 2.
Crew machine gunned as they attempt to escape. Sole survivor seeks retribution. Very realistic plot. Not so much the camouflage on the U-boat. Fantastic flying scenes (specially the 1st take off from the river by O'Toole) with a beautifully restored Grumman J2F Duck amphibian.Excellent photography. Despite being almost 40 years old, it's cinematic rhythm and suspense still hold very well, with the only exception of the opening scene.

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Unusual and exciting WW II story --

about a British navy ship-sinking survivor out to sink the submarine that sank his ship. Will keep you on the edge of your seat, and guessing wrongly what will happen next.

The locale is also unusual (and a surprise), and the three leads are seasoned actors, and excellent, one of them quite beautiful.

Murphy's War

The dvd is in excellent condition as it should be since it is NEW. An all time favorite of mine!

A forgotten gem

As other reviewers have noted, this film is a forgotten gem. It's long, so be prepared to settle in for the duration. It is, as one person noted, a kind of WWII remake of "Moby Dick," but it's also a meditation on fanaticism (like Moby Dick); the irony here is that the German U-boat commander, who (spoiler alert!) machine-guns helpless seamen in the water and murders Murphy's (O'Toole's) pilot, is not a fanatic; he is just a technocrat doing his job, a cog in a big war machine; he has to kill everyone so his U-boat won't be discovered. His face shows his anguish when he shoots the pilot, and he tries to apologize; he's a "normal" man working in a lunatic war machine. Murphy, on the other hand, is a man who believes in nothing but himself, a kind of modern Everyman who becomes a fanatic through his desire for revenge. There's a lot of fuel for thought here; the Nazi is really kind of a normal man loyal to a perverse, fanatically sick political system, while Murphy, ostensibly "normal," really becomes functionally insane by the end of the film. The scene (spoiler alert!) where Phillippe Noiret walks away from him near the end of the film is telling.

The setting, somewhere on, I believe, the Orinoco or Amazon River, is interesting, and the contrasts between Murphy, the Nazi skipper, the pacifist doctor working at a Christian mission in the jungle, and the Noiret characters are engaging. I liked the fact that there was no attempt to create a love story between Murphy and the doctor. There is also a great scene where Murphy teaches himself to fly a reconnaissance float plane.

An interesting, different film.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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