This Gun for Hire (1942)

the leading man is my tpye

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

'This Gun For Hire (1942)' is a fantastic film-noir that pulls no punches, focusing on a cold-blooded killer who's as merciless as he is efficient. The title role is played with a detached, steely verve in a brilliant starring debut by Alan Ladd. He's never on the moral high-ground, he isn't being framed or anything like that, and in fact is presented with very few redeeming factors. Aside from, that is, a brief but powerful scene detailing his traumatic childhood, which is actually almost as unconventional as having such a blatantly brutal anti-hero in a 1940s piece. Though some war-time patriotism seeps in towards the end, it doesn't betray the tone created up until that point and the exciting climax maintains that violence begets violence unless a choice is made to stop it. 8/10

This movie is about a hired killer named Raven, and it uses a variety of means to make us like him. First, Raven is played by Alan Ladd, who is good looking, and we have a natural inclination to like good-looking people. Second, he has a cat for a pet, of which he is very protective, causing him to slap a maid when she runs the cat out of the room after it knocks over a can of milk. We tend to like people who like animals. True, we tend to not like men who slap women, but that is the sort of thing we would expect from a man who kills people for money. It is the positive qualities that he is given to make us like him, in spite of the negative ones that would ordinarily make us not like him, that are interesting.When he goes to an apartment where there is a man he is supposed to kill, he sees a little girl sitting on the stairs with her legs in braces, probably a victim of polio. He doesn't like the fact that she is a witness, but he continues on up the stairs. Once inside the room, he is dismayed by the presence of a woman. After he kills the man, he sort of apologizes to the woman, saying he was told the man would be alone, and then he shoots her too. The man he killed was a blackmailer, so we had no sympathy for him, but in killing the woman, who presumably was nothing more than a girlfriend of the blackmailer, Raven shows that he is not averse to killing someone who is innocent, if she happens to be a witness. As a result, we wonder if he will shoot the little girl too on his way back down the stairs. He is tempted, but takes pity on her and simply leaves after handing her the ball she dropped. That is another way the movie gets us to like him.Furthermore, the movie gives us another villain, Willard Gates, whom we are encouraged to despise. Gates is played by Laird Cregar, who just has the look and manner of someone creepy. He is the one who hired Raven to do the job. He pays Raven off in ten dollar bills, and then double-crosses him by giving the serial numbers to the police so that Raven will go to prison where he cannot talk. At least, that is the idea, but it really doesn't make sense, because the best way to keep a hit-man from talking to the police is by not double-crossing him. In any event, it turns out that Gates works for a chemical company that is selling a formula for poison gas to the Japanese during World War II. Compared to Gates, Raven seems to be a pretty good guy, for a hit-man.Ellen Graham, a showgirl, is enlisted by a senator to go undercover and investigate Gates and his company. This naturally results in her and Raven crossing paths. He almost kills her to keep her from talking, but she gets away. Eventually, they come to like each other, especially after he rescues her from Gates, who was planning to have her killed. Raven confides in her about dreams he keeps having of the woman who raised him as a child, who beat him regularly, and even hit him with a flatiron, deforming his wrist. This movie was made when psychoanalysis was familiar to audiences, who were therefore primed to accept childhood trauma as an explanation for mental problems later in life. Even today, we tend to accept this explanation for why Raven is the way he is, somewhat excusing his evil nature.Raven wants to get even with Gates and with Brewster, the man Gates works for, while Ellen wants to find out if those two men are traitors. This leads them to cooperate with each other, with Ellen telling Raven where he can find the two men. Brewster is an old man in a wheel chair, which makes him the third person in this movie with some kind of physical disability, but there does not appear to be any special significance about that. In any event, when Raven forces Brewster to sign a confession, the latter dies of a heart attack, after which Raven kills Gates. This is a common ploy of the movies, having the protagonist act from personal motives, which just happen to be of great help for the war effort. So this is another way the movie gets us to like Raven.Finally, Raven starts to shoot a police detective, but when he sees that he is Ellen's fiancé, he holds his fire. This consideration for her makes us like him some more. Then he is shot by a policeman and dies. Because his death is the proper punishment for the crimes he has committed, it balances the books, allowing us to like him without feeling guilty about it.

When hit man Philip Raven (Alan Ladd) successfully completes a job, his sleazy employer Willard Gates (Laird Cregar) pays him with stolen marked bills. Raven sets out to get revenge but along the way meets and befriends nightclub singer Ellen Graham (Veronica Lake), who's been recruited by the government to prove Gates is working with foreign agents. She's also the girlfriend of the police lieutenant (Robert Preston) in charge of hunting down Raven.The movie that made Alan Ladd a star and the first to pair him with Veronica Lake. It's an exciting blend of film noir and WW2 espionage movies. Ladd's terrific as the killer with a soft spot for kittens and crippled kids who's stirred to do the right thing. Lake is very likable and cute. Although Ladd's not her love interest in this film, she has far more chemistry with him than bland Robert Preston. Laird Cregar is a wonderfully unsympathetic villain. He's just a slimeball through and through. Tully Marshall is fun as Cregar's boss. It's a great-looking movie with snappy and memorable dialogue, moody atmosphere, and even some nice humor here and there.

"This Gun For Hire" is a really good noir picture, as well as a triumph for the vertically challenged. Its stars are pint-sized Alan Ladd and tiny Veronica Lake, who try to match wits with Laird Cregar, a huge guy who looks even bigger in scenes with either one of them.You can immediately tell it's a noir film, as Ladd is seen in his hotel room with no lights on (noir hotels always seem to have power problems), and wears a trench coat in most scenes. Ladd himself runs the gamut of emotions from A to B, and is alternately rude or scowling, sometimes both in the same scene. He is a pathological hit man who vows revenge on his employer (Cregar) when he discovers he has been paid off in marked bills. He forms an alliance with Lake, who works as a singer in Cregar's night club. See storyline for more details.It is a limited role for Ladd, who does not smile or evince a shred of humanity throughout the film, except that he likes cats. Veronica Lake is something of an acquired taste but comes off well in this peculiar, offbeat picture. The set design for Nitro, the company run by Tully Marshall (Cregar's boss), looks like a set left over from the Buck Rogers serial. But "This Gun For Hire" is eminently watchable and is a compelling and absorbing entry in the noir genre.