I'm going to sink her.

Murphy’s War

(1971)

More evidence of Peter Yates’ post-Bullitt struggle for interesting material. There’s nothing very compelling about this WWII story of an Irish survivor of a British ship sunk by a German U-Boat off Venezuela. It’s certainly difficult to see why Yates and producer Michael Deeley chose to make it rather than The Godfather (to be fair, anyone but Coppola would have made The Godfather decidedly less memorable).

It could have been made any time in the previous 15 years, and thus feels curiously out of synch with the new era of filmmaking that both Yates and O’Toole were very much a part of (the downbeat dénouement excepted). Perhaps the director thought it would give him the chance to do for flying what Bullitt did for driving (there are copious flying sequences, as O’Toole fixes up a plane utilises it to hunt down the U-Boat). Indeed, these scenes are very proficient, but they do go on. As does the film as a whole.

O’Toole clearly relishes his exaggerated Oirish accent, but it begins to wear thin quite quickly. By the time he has happened upon another plan to get even with the Germans (with a torpedo from their sub) his obsession has grown a mite tiresome. Jolly and austere support respectively from Philippe Noiret and Sian Phillips.

**1/2

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You're not only wrong. You're wrong at the top of your voice.

Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)
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Django Unchained (2012)
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Doctor Who has dabbled with the search structure elsewhere, most notably across The Key to Time season, and ultimately Marinus’ mission is even more of a MacGuffin than in that sextology, a means to string together what would otherwise be vignettes to little overall coherence…

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The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010)
Easily the best of the Narnia films, which is maybe damning it with faint praise.

Michael Apted does a competent job directing (certainly compared to his Bond film - maybe he talked to his second unit this time), Dante Spinotti's cinematography is stunning and the CGI mostly well-integrated with the action.

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***

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