It seems strange that one of the most lauded adventure movies of all time centers on two foreigners plotting to build a bomb to sink a boat stationed in a foreign land. That’s not what people talk about when they bring up “The African Queen” (1951, not rated). They talk about two dangerous, yet successful gambles and one unsuccessful one: John Huston’s decision to shoot mainly on location in Africa itself, Humprey Bogart’s hale and hearty survival on canned goods and whisky, and Katharine Hepburn’s ill-advised water-glugging (which led to the necessary placement of a bucket everywhere, so she could ralph at will, and her realistic looking act as a “crazy, psalm-singing, skinny old maid,” as Bogey’s character would call her).

Also, Wes Anderson totally got his font-on from this movie. (Man, Bogart would crack that guy like a fresh sliver of lime, if Bogart used limes.)

In any case, Bogart plays Charlie Allnut, a raffish runner of mail, oxygen tanks, cigarettes and blasting gelatin who brings half-hearted word of World War I (“I forget who’s with who”) to Rose Sayer (Hepburn) and her brother, who are joyless, uptight, misguided missionaries leading a sweltering room of mumbling African natives in dissonant hymns. The Germans soon show up and torch the place, Hepburn’s brother dies and Bogart shows back up to tell her that, uh, bodies do need to be buried and she should probably be whisked the hell out of there — on his scrappy, 30-foot, 1886-vintage, open deck steam boat. Rather than hole up with Allnut’s numerous and lovely cases of cigarettes and Gordon’s gin, the uppity Sayer devises a plan to motor down the supposedly impassible river, into a lake in which the Germans have a gunboat, to sacrifice Allnut’s boat in the service of destroying it — a plot sort of based on the Battle for Lake Tanganyika (did you even know WWI involved strategic battles in Africa? I shake my head at my ignorance). En route, there’s a little odd couple action: Sayer dumps out Allnut’s gin (she does ultimately apologize) and becomes a whitewater junkie, prim arrangements to deal with bathing, rain and leeches are established, and they engage in a little primitive welding, literally and figuratively. Despite a 2009 remaster, there are also some muddy, horribly mixed sounds of wild animals in the background — do ignore those.

Only someone who saw the world in ridiculously stark black and white terms would say this classic is a movie about terrorists. I got upbraided recently at a breakfast with a woman who objected to my use of the word “guys,” saying that it derived from Guy Fawkes, and that anyone I referred to as “guys” I was calling a terrorist, since he did plant a bunch of gunpowder (a bomb) in an assassination plot. (Had I been quicker on my feet, I might have noted that I wasn’t calling anyone “Guido,” which was Fawkes given name, but ah well, esprit d’escalier.) The difference here is that Fawkes’ plot failed, while Allnut and Sayer’s intentions were obviously noble — the merciless, mechanical Germans in this 1951 film being obvious prototypes for the Nazi villains the Allies had just defeated when “The African Queen” was released. I’d imagine that only the most uptight critics would see the plot of the movie as terrorism. The film is an incredible adventure amazingly carried by just two actors, one of whom was incredibly ill. It’s also the basis of an argument, perhaps a bit uncomfortable, that things such as quote-unquote terrorism can be things that the average popcorn-munching American audience will cheer. Because it was a brave and heroic and plucky thing to do. Because no one would argue against using such methods sometimes, especially against proto-Nazis and with the wisdom of hindsight. And because — as a wise friend of mine in the legal community said as I was composing this review — the victors get to write the history books.

Ashley O’Dell reviews movies that aren’t in the theater anymore. She lives in North Hollywood, near the In-N-Out Burger.