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Alan Ladd (Shane) made his breakthrough performance in this unusually dark and violent film noir tale co-starring Veronica Lake and Robert Preston. Ladd plays a hit man hunting down a client (The Lodger‘s Laird Cregar) who double-crossed him. Lake plays a nightclub performer who gets enlisted by a senator to help the government investigate her boss, who happens to be Cregar. Serendipity brings Ladd and Lake together in trying to expose Cregar’s shady dealings with America’s wartime enemies, only to learn he’s just taking orders from a villain in a higher seat of power.
This Gun for Hire, based on a Graham Greene novel, is densely plotted, briskly paced, and entertaining eighty-two minutes. The character relationships rely a little too much on coincidence, with Lake’s fiancée (Preston) also being the police chief who’s hot on Ladd’s tail. But if you run with it, the character dynamics are very rewarding. Ladd and Lake are sensational in their first of seven films together. After their first encounter, Ladd actually tries to kill Lake for knowing too much about him. But once they realize they’re after the same shared enemy, they strike an uneasy alliance.
Ladd is phenomenal in this movie, shockingly violent in several scenes, but tender and vulnerable in others. The film tries to explain how cold-hearted killers are made, which makes him empathetic without forgiving his crimes. Lake continues to exhibit the same easy charm that made her so beguiling in Sullivan’s Travels. Her frank, tom-boy qualities help bring out the best in Ladd’s character without much sentimentalizing. She also gets a terrific little song number (dubbed by Martha Mears) called “Now You See It, Now You Don’t,” in which she performs a series of magic tricks before a nightclub crowd. The wonderful Robert Preston is woefully underutilized, but it’s always nice to see him in a movie. Cregar makes a splash as the film’s primary antagonist.
Director Frank Tuttle isn’t as artful or accomplished with film noir’s trappings as other directors, but he proves a competent storyteller and gives his actors plenty of room to shine. The film’s ending feels a little softer than it deserves, but up until then This Gun for Hire is full of pathos, great character interplay, and moments of remarkable darkness. Ladd’s character guns down a woman at the beginning of the film, punches another in the face, and in a later scene, he reluctantly kills a cat to stop it from giving away his location during a police search. Somehow, the film still manages to make him a sympathetic character — a fete unto itself.
The film reportedly had difficulty passing censors at the time, not just for its violence but for some sexuality as well. There’s a noteworthy shot in which a nightclub performer has her leg hoisted up in front of the camera, with the image of a chair obviously superimposed to obscure our view.
With Tully Marshall, Marc Lawrence, and Roger Imhof.