This Gun for Hire

This Gun for Hire

By

  • Genre: Crime, Thriller, Mystery
  • Release Date: 1942-04-24
  • Runtime: 81 minutes
  • : 6.976
  • Production Company: Paramount Pictures
  • Production Country: United States of America
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6.976/10
6.976
From 188 Ratings

Description

Sadistic killer-for-hire Philip Raven becomes enraged when his latest job is paid off in marked bills. Vowing to track down his double-crossing boss, nightclub executive Gates, Raven sits beside Gates' lovely new employee, Ellen, on a train out of town. Although Ellen is engaged to marry the police lieutenant who's hunting down Raven, she decides to try and set the misguided hit man straight as he hides from the cops and plots his revenge.

Trailer

Reviews

  • CinemaSerf

    7
    By CinemaSerf
    “Raven” (Alan Ladd) is a meticulously capable contract killer whom we meet bumping off not just a blackmailer, but an innocent girl who just happened to be with him at the time. His boss, “Gates” (Laird Cregar) rather foolishly pays him off with dodgy cash and that earns him the enmity of his former employee. Meantime, the authorities are suspicious of “Gates" and his own wheel-chair bound industrialist boss “Brewster” (Tully Marshall) and so they ask chanteuse "Ellen” (Veronica Lake) - who just happens to be dating the already interested detective “Crane” (Robert Preston) - to help then entrap him via a nightclub he owns. When “Raven” and “Ellen” meet on a train, the dynamic between them gradually changes from cat and mouse to cat and cat - with revenge, a little espionage and perhaps even treason on the cards. What chance “Raven” can get to the bottom of the mystery before the police close in on him? Cregar can always be relied upon to ham things up nicely and he is true to form here, especially as events close in on his cowardly character. Ladd is also quite impressive as he takes Graham Greene's cold and ruthless character from a menacing start and gradually humanises him through his association not just with “Ellen” but through his love of cats and his realisation that his erstwhile employers are potentially traitors - and that is one line no amount of cash is going to induce him to cross. On that last front, you can readily imagine it’s subliminal effect on patriotic wartime audiences along the line of “careless talk costs lives” or that there could be fifth columnists anywhere preparing to sabotage the efforts of the USA, and this packs a lot of story into eighty minutes.

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