Living in Key West, where he runs a charter fishing service with his boat The Lucy M, is former Navy man, Sam Martin (Audie Murphy), a good guy who doesn't have it in him to do wrong. Though finances are a constant struggle, he and his wife Lucy (Patricia Owens) are happy and very much in love.
After failing to be paid close to $1,000 for a job, Sam hits a local casino, where his financial burden comes to the awareness of craps player Hannigan (Eddie Albert), who hires Sam to take him fishing. Accompanying Hannigan on the excursion is Eva (Gita Hall), and though she puts a bit of a move on him, Sam has no intention of cheating on his wife. (The lines he uses to decline her advances are the exact same ones John Garfield uses to turn down Patricia Neal in The Breaking Point.)
Using the fishing excursion only as a ploy, Hannigan's real destination is Havana, where he has arranged a meeting with a band of Cuban revolutionaries. After an eventful night--in which Hannigan shoots a man---Sam returns to Key West, completely determined to avoid any future contact with his lawbreaking passenger.
However, when the mortgage on The Lucy M is bought by Hannigan, Sam has no choice but to do the man's bidding. Behind on his payments, Sam finds his boat in foreclosure, and the only way he will be able to get her back is to deliver Hannigan---and the guns he is supplying the revolutionaries---to Cuba...something he absolutely does not want to do.
Will this man, who doesn't have it in him to go bad, go bad after all? How it all plays out is the balance of the film.
As stated in my review for The Breaking Point, I don't care for the Bogey/Bacall version of To Have and Have Not at all, so for that reason, I very nearly didn't even give the other two adaptions a try. Wow, would I have been missing out! The Breaking Point usurped Dust Be My Destiny's status as my favorite John Garfield film, and The Gun Runners has become my favorite Audie Murphy film. I completely adore Audie in this film. Besides loving his character, I am in love with his look. In his early 30's here, his face has matured from his earlier Westerns, and he is looking incredibly handsome here. The storyline is interesting and exciting, and the playful, romantic interaction between Murphy and his wife is very sweet. (The same playful interaction occurred between John Garfield and wife Phyllis Thaxter in The Breaking Point, and I quite enjoyed it there as well.)
The Gun Runners is out on DVD, plus it is available in its entirety on YouTube and through instant viewing on Net Flix . If you are a fan of Audie Murphy, you will definitely want to see this. Also, if you've read the Hemingway novel, you might want to catch this and see how it compares.
Happy viewing!!
NOTE: Repeated viewings of this film have taken it from 4-star to 5-star status for me, and I have updated and expanded this review on June 12, 2013 (HERE).