This being the third version of Ernest Hemmingway's novel "To Have and Have Not", it is updated to the Florida Keys of the late 50's where a revolution is going on in Cuba and a gun smuggling ring wants the use of Sam Martin's boat. Audie Murphy, who played himself as a World War II hero in "To Hell and Back", now takes on Bogart's classic role yet is about as far from Bogart in charisma as Cuba is from democracy. There is also the case of the missing vixen, the Lauren Bacall role in the original. Now, Sam is married (to a fairly feisty woman played by Patricia Owens) and runs a fishing vessel that is about to be repossessed for non-payment of dock fees. Everett Sloane takes on the comic relief role of Sam's drunken sidekick (played in the original by Walter Brennan) and gives basically the same performance that Brennan did. Eddie Albert is the bad guy, out to control or fleece anybody he can, and is accompanied by his mistress (Gita Hall) who adds the only heat in the film.While the action sequences are very suspenseful, the film seems like something that was being done on television crime shows, only expanded to 93 minutes for the big screen. Albert's villain is a seemingly likable guy who goes off the nice guy wagon the moment he is confronted in Cuba by a soldier wanting to see his papers. He gives a truly memorable performance. Murphy tries his best, but there is no escaping what he was up against, and the women in the film are simply stereotypes, particularly Peggy Maley as the drunk at the bar. Gita Hall as Albert's mistress takes the role played by Dolores Moran in the original and makes it appear more important than it is.

World War II's most decorated hero Audie Murphy recreates the Harry Morgan role that Humphrey Bogart originated in director Howard Hawks' "To Have and Have Not" as a Florida Key West charter boat skipper who finds himself caught between a rock and a hard place with villainous arms smugglers. Clocking in at a trim 83 minutes, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" director Don Siegel's "The Gun Runners" qualifies as a straightforward, no-nonsense, apolitical, maritime melodrama about a hard luck skipper who is literally living on a borrowed time. As Sam Martin, Murphy is so destitute that he hasn't been able to make a boat payment in three months, and the man who pumps his boat fuel hovers around him greedily in anticipation of getting his long overdue money. Nevertheless, despite these trials and tribulations, Sam enjoys a good life. He is his own boss, and he is married happily to Lucy Martin (Patricia Owens of "The Law and Jake Wade"), and he doesn't have a dishonest bone in his body.Siegel's film isn't half as good as either Hawks' classic or director Michael Curtiz's remake "The Breaking Point" with John Garfield, but it is still an interesting film, competently made, without flashy effects or thematic pretensions. The characters constitute a motley bunch, but the level of corruption in "The Gun Runners" is nothing compared to an earlier Siegel thriller "The Line-Up." "The Gun Runners" suffers from contrivance, but the narrative generates some suspense. The cast is stellar with Eddie Albert as a despicable villain, backed up by Richard Jaeckel. This United Artists theatrical release differs substantially from the Hawks' original and the Curtiz remake. Scenarists Daniel Mainwaring of "Out of the Past" and Paul Monash of "Salem's Lot" have altered several scenes and characters. Like the previous big-screen adaptations, however, "The Gun Runners" jettisons the chief complication in the relentlessly depressing Hemingway novel. Ostensibly, Sam doesn't lose an arm like his literary counterpart and he doesn't die in a gunfight aboard his charter boat with bank robbers.Like the earlier outings, "The Gun Runners" opens with our hero losing a fishing rod and line when a tourist lets a marlin run off with it. Peterson (John Harding of "The Joker is Wild") has spent ten days out on Sam's charter boat and he has had rotten luck. The last day out he hooks into a big one, but he fails to follow Sam's suggestion about handling the fishing rod and he loses it. In the original, the same character with a different name tried to skip out of Bogart, but he got caught in a cross-fire as Cuban authorities tried to round up revolutionaries. "The Gun Runners" is set in the days before the botched Cuban revolution and Peterson here never pays his bill. The authorities catch up with this bad check writer who has been kiting checks galores and Sam doesn't get his money. This bad luck frustrates Arnold (Jack Elam of "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral") because he was counting on Sam to pay him off. Along comes a happy-go-lucky fellow Hanagan (Eddie Albert of "Attack") who wants to rent Sam's boat. Eventually, Hanagan tells Sam that he wants to go to Cuba. Sam is already leary of Cuba and Cubans. Cuban revolutionaries have tried, as they did in the earlier versions, to charter Sam's boat for subversive activities against the government. In fact, the revolutionaries kill a cop when they try to persuade Sam to join their cause. Sam wants nothing to do with the revolutionaries. Like the other versions, Sam has a deckhand, a rummy named Harvey (Everett Sloane of "Citizen Kane"), who interferes in everything that Sam does. One character asks Sam why he doesn't get rid of Harvey and stop worrying about taking care of the guy. Sam replies that Harvey believes that he is taking care of him.Destitute for money, Sam agrees to land Hanagan and his girlfriend in Havana for an evening despite not having proper papers. Hanagan makes a deal with the revolutionaries to deliver weapons to them and he pulls Sam into the scheme. Sam learns too late that Hanagan has bought the note of his boat so Sam will have to take Hanagan back to Cuba to conclude their arms deal. Hanagan brings aboard a Cuban revolutionary who is supposed to take them to a rendezvous where they will exchange the money for the guns. The revolutionary learns too late that Hanagan had planned to double-cross him and a gunfight erupts on Sam's boat. Hanagan and his henchmen as well as the Cuban die and Sam catches a slug. Luckily for Sam, Harvey remained concealed aboard the charter boat and pilots it back to Key West. Harvey has iron-clad faith in Sam and Sam's moral values. "I knew you couldn't do it, Sam. I knew it. You know why? Because like I told Arnold, a man can't go bad if it ain't in him to go bad. And it ain't in you, Sam. Even if you tried it." Again, the performances are all good and Sloane is really good, but he doesn't surpass Walter Brennan in the original. Siegel maintains enough tension throughout the action, but he allows his protagonist to romance his wife and spend some time with the other characters at Key West.

***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.