- In a genre where antiheroes and nightclub singers are a dime a dozen, Frank Tuttle's excellent This Gun For Hire still manages to stand out. With characters like these, it would have to. Let's start, as the film does, with Raven (Alan Ladd). Raven is a hitman, pure and simple. Sure, he draws the line at killing kids and maybe feels a twinge of remorse at killing women, but the guy is not exactly easy to like. Contrast him with Ellen Graham (Veronica Lake), whose entrancing floor show is literally magical. It's tough not to fall in love with her, as the rotund nightclub owner Willard Gates (Laird Cregar) obviously does.
- What brings Ellen and Raven together is ultimately a tale of international espionage. Someone has been selling chemical formulas to the Axis, and a California senator (Roger Imhof) needs Ellen's help to determine whether Gates is the party responsible. After a chance meeting on a train, Raven and Ellen quickly find themselves in a tangled situation that has them hiding from the police, spying on Gates, and eventually tracking down the criminal mastermind, a decrepit chemical company president named Brewster (Tully Marshall). We'll see whether Raven's compassion extends to a woman whose boyfriend (Robert Preston) is the police officer trying to catch Raven before he kills again.
- While the film's direction and spy-oriented plot are really nothing better or worse than could be found in several early 40's noirs, the characters in This Gun For Hire are what count. In their first onscreen pairing, Ladd and Lake are both terrific as two people who would never have been brought together except by fate. Cregar, too, is quite memorable as a cultured type repulsed by the violence that he regularly orders his colorful chauffeur (Marc Lawrence) to handle. Perhaps the film's greatest legacy is that it prepared the cinematic world for the idea of a heroic hitman. When Le Samourai's Jef Costello would adjust his hat in the mirror some 25 years later, he may well have imagined Alan Ladd in his mind.
- This film features what may be my favorite movie tagline: "He's dynamite with a gun or a girl."
