Murphy's War

It is the closing days of World War II an Irishman Murphy (Peter O’Toole) is the sole survivor of the crew of a merchant ship, Mount Kyle, which has been sunk by a German U-Boat, which then machine-gunned the survivors in the water. Murphy makes it ashore (to a missionary settlement on the Orinoco in Venezuela) where he is treated by a pacifist Quaker doctor, Dr Hayden (Siân Phillips). When he discovers the U-Boat is hiding further up river, under the cover of the jungle, he sets about obsessively plotting his revenge to sink it by any means, including using the Grumman J2F Duck (a floatplane) from the Mount Kyle. The floatplane had been recovered, the wounded pilot later being shot dead in his hospital bed by the U-boat captain, in order to preserve the secret of its location and, presumably, its action in shooting survivors in the water. Murphy learns how to fly the plane in the most daring way, getting it out on the choppy waters of the river and discovering how the controls work by trial and error. This extensive flying scene involves lots of shots of the floatplane veering sharply to avoid buildings, the jungle and stalling. Murphy soon finds the U-boat’s hiding place and attempts to bomb it using home-made Molotov cocktail bombs, an attempt which fails. Meanwhile word has come that Germany has surrendered; but Murphy is obsessed with revenge and makes plans to ram the U-boat with a floating crane owned by the friendly Frenchman Louis, played by respected French actor Philippe Noiret. This also fails as the U-boat dives under him. However, the U-boat dives too hard and becomes stuck in a mud bank. Murphy uses the crane to recover a torpedo fired earlier from the U-boat and drops it on the trapped crew. However, Murphy is also doomed; the explosion causes the crane jib to pin him to the deck as the floating crane sinks. —wikipedia