This Gun For Hire

Too often overshadowed by that “other” early film noir, The Maltese Falcon (1941), Alan Ladd arguably bests Bogart’s world-weariness here as Raven, a hitman with a soft spot for stray kittens and disabled kids. Adapting one of Graham Greene’s most entertaining works, Frank Tuttle directs the action from nightclubs to night trains to chemical plants to rail yards, each sequence nourishing the almost supernatural chemistry between Ladd and Veronica Lake in their first on-screen pairing. When Raven is compensated for his latest “hit” with marked bills, he sets out to exact revenge on the double-crossing client, Willard Gates (the grotesquely gifted Laird Cregor), along the way rescuing Ellen Graham (Lake), nightclub entertainer and girlfriend of police lieutenant Michael Crane (Robert Preston), from an attempt on her life inside a Hollywood mansion. With an intricate plot that requires careful attention, This Gun for Hire is a hugely entertaining movie and a smash-up of elements that would go on to become noir tropes. Fifteen years later, superstar James Cagney paid homage to the film by re-animating Burnett’s screenplay in his single directorial effort, Short Cut to Hell (1957).