This Gun for Hire

I like Cats! So says the icy cold broken wrist killer! Phillip Raven is a hit man of no obvious moral fibre, he literally will kill anyone for the right price. After fulfilling a contract for the chocolate munching Willard Gates, he finds himself pursued by the law on account that he was paid by Gates with stolen money. Raven sets out for the ultimate revenge and dovetailing towards the explosive finale with him is sultry conjurer Ellen Graham and honest cop Michael Crane. Based on the Graham Greene novel "A Gun For Sale", this is not a straight out adaptation, the plot has been re-jigged with very impressive results. The most enlightening thing I found when reading up on the film was that the studio were so blown away by the efforts of Alan Ladd as Raven, they turned the script around to make him the film's chief axis, and boy what a smart move that was for this is Alan Ladd's show all the way. Ladd plays Raven with brilliant icy veneer, he's cold and devoid of emotion, his only trip to anything resembling caring is an affinity to cats - because in his own words, "cats don't need anyone, they are on their own, just like me", the result is one of the most unnerving killers put on to the 40s cinema screens. Veronica Lake is the stunning female of the piece, she glides through the picture with ease as Ellen, a character with her own issues, but thankfully she's integral outside of any sort of romantic plot, even though she is the only one who gets close enough to Raven to learn anything about what makes him tick. Robert Preston as Michael Crane was to be the pics focus but he becomes a mere side part thanks to Ladd's barnstorming show, and unsurprisingly Laird Cregar is suitably shifty as Gates. It's a fine film in its own right, it's tightly filmed, wonderfully scripted and contains a great noir ending, but ultimately it's all about the cold as death hit-man Raven - and of course the great performance by the man who played him. 8.5/10

“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.