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. In jargon the German sailors called it "Wintergarden". To make this sub more closely resemble a U-boat, the bow net saw was added. In all it's not a bad movie, especially with Peter O'Toole as the main character. I like the way have cast the German Kapitaen Leutnant as the sub's captain. As in reality, those sub captains were all quite young, most in their early or mid twenties. As the crews were even younger, the captain was called DER ALTE.

Murphy's War is one of my top 50 most loved films, and I've watched A LOT of films, in all genres. When a film with a straightforward narrative, and a relatively simple plot with very few characters can rivet you to your seat right until the end, you have a hell of a story on your hands! The wide 2.35:1 format and outstanding cinematography by Oscar winner Douglas Slocombe are ideally matched to the location and type of action. And the reviewer who thinks the role of Murphy isn't suited for Peter O'Toole should have his head examined! O'Toole IS Murphy as much as he IS Lawrence of Arabia. Murphy's progression deeper and deeper into a vengeance-clouded mania is masterfully accomplished; he's in good company here, along with Gregory Peck's Captain Ahab in Moby Dick, Spencer Tracy's Old Man in The Old Man and the Sea, and Robert Shaw's Captain Quint in Jaws, O'Toole's tenacious Irishman Murphy is an inspiration easily absorbed and applied to all situations in which one may be considered the underdog by a wide margin. In other words, Murphy isn't an ironic post modern anti-hero. He's the old fashioned everyman, overcoming incredible odds to achieve his ends kind of hero. One could critique the film from sociological or psychological perspectives, and question whether the screenwriter intended for Murphy to symbolize the evil war can bring out in man, or the greatness, or both. But without reading anything into it, Murphy's War is on a primary level simply a terrific action yarn, well worth owning on DVD.

I enjoyed the movie very much, but then Peter O'Toole is a grate Actor and his films are usually worth watching. The one irritating thing was not with the movie but with the plot description on this site. The plot states that "he was the sole survivor of his crew, that has been decimated" this is impossible the word decimated means to reduce by one tenth so you could never have just one survivor. The writer could have used Destroyed, wiped out, all killed or slaughtered; any of these would have made more sense. If one is going to put things up on an international site you should make sure that you know what words mean before you use them. There were also some spellings mistakes in the plot even web browsers have spelling checkers these days so there is no excuse

This movie hooked me when I first saw it on television back in the late 1970s. It was made at a time when action/suspense movies did not rely on melodrama, super-human characters, or stunts and special effects that defy the laws of physics; rather, the story follows real people (played by actors who can actually act) in dramatic conflict. The ending is not Hollywood: it is tragic, melancholic, satisfying, and lasting. Peter O'Toole is, as always, pitch-perfect playing an Irishman in the British merchant marine during World War II. Reminiscent of Terrence Malik, director Peter Yates evokes both the calm, tropical beauty of the movie's setting on the Orinoco river delta in Venezuela, and the reflexive violence and weariness of men who have lived at war for half a decade. Muphy's War is one of those rare action/suspense movies driven by characters, realism, not just plot and explosions.This is one of my all-time favorite World War II movies.