Rent This Gun for Hire (1942)
3.7 of 5 from 97 ratings
1h 21min
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
Lake is nightclub chanteuse Ellen (Veronica Lake), and her police detective boyfriend Michael (Robert Preston) is on the hunt for assassin-for-hire Philip Raven (Alan Ladd), after Raven performed a hit on a chemist with a secret formula and a taste for blackmail. When Raven's employer Gates (Laird Cregar) double crosses him after the job is done, Raven seeks revenge, and his path crosses with Ellen after she is hired to perform at Gates' club. Raven learns that the stolen formula is for a poison gas that is to be sold to the Japanese, and his pangs of conscience - and revelations of his tortured past - turn Ellen's fear into compassion, just as dangerous forces close in on Raven. But Ellen is still unsure if Raven can be trusted... - Actors:
- Veronica Lake, Robert Preston, Laird Cregar, Alan Ladd, Tully Marshall, Marc Lawrence, Olin Howland, Roger Imhof, Pamela Blake, Frank Ferguson, Victor Kilian, Patricia Farr, Harry Shannon, Charles C. Wilson, Mikhail Rasumny, Bernadene Hayes, Mary Davenport, Chester Clute, Charles Arnt, Earle S. Dewey
- Directors:
- Frank Tuttle
- Producers:
- Richard Blumenthal
- Writers:
- Albert Maltz, W.R. Burnett, Graham Greene, Frank Tuttle
- Studio:
- Universal Pictures
- Genres:
- Action & Adventure, Classics, Drama, Thrillers
- Collections:
- 10 Films to Watch if You Like Citizen Kane, All the Twos: 1902-62, Cinema Paradiso's 2022 Centenary Club, Films to Watch If You Like..., Holidays Film Collection, Romantic Film Pairings for Valentine's Day, A Brief History of Film..., Top 10 Films About Trains: Thrillers, Top Films
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- 14/09/2020
- Run Time:
- 81 minutes
- Languages:
- English LPCM Mono
- Subtitles:
- English Hard of Hearing
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Full Screen 1.37:1
- Colour:
- B & W
- BLU-RAY Regions:
- B
- Bonus:
- Audio commentary by film scholar Adrian Martin
- "This Gun for Hire" episode of 'Lux Radio Theater' with the voices of Alan Ladd and Joan Blondell "This Gun for Hire" episode of 'The Screen Guild Theater' with the voices of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake
- Trailer
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Reviews (2) of This Gun for Hire
Hard Boiled Soft Centre - This Gun for Hire review by Count Otto Black
It's often said that the test of whether an actor is suitable to play James Bond is whether you believe he'd kill you. If that's true, Alan Ladd would have been a great Bond, because he's totally believable as a killer, and, despite getting the dreaded "and introducing..." credit that usually means you'll never be heard of again, he almost completely steals the picture. It's a pity he was subsequently typecast as a hero and seldom got to play villains, because he's very good at being bad.
Veronica Lake is extremely engaging, and has infinitely more chemistry with Ladd than the charmless fellow she's supposed to be in love with - some of her declarations of affection are unintentionally funny, due to being delivered in a tone of voice more suited to "I've run out of hemorrhoid cream" - but the two of them sometimes appear to be in different movies. Ladd's ruthless but tortured hit-man isn't funny in the slightest, whereas Lake's wisecracking nightclub singer wouldn't be out of place in one of those films where a mad scientist commits murders while dressed as a gorilla. You can see her acting going up several notches every time she's on screen with Ladd, so I guess those two weren't exactly strangers, and almost everything good about this film involves either Ladd on his own or Ladd and Lake together, but by herself, she's sometimes downright odd. In particular, the fact that she sings extremely bad songs while performing conjuring tricks that are physically impossible unless she has superpowers is utterly bizarre, since it has nothing whatsoever to do with the plot.
About that plot: it's derived from a Graham Greene novel, therefore sin and redemption must be laid on by the shovelful even if Catholicism isn't explicitly involved, and since it's 1942, patriotism must be shoehorned in somehow, but the way in which Ladd's anti-hero is betrayed very early in the film for pointlessly self-defeating reasons just so that the plot can proceed is bad script-writing, as is the baffling sub-plot where a great deal of effort goes into setting up a totally implausible scenario in which a company tests a lethal chemical weapon in its own corporate headquarters just so that there can be a scene where everybody's wearing a gas-mask!
What stops this film from being the classic it's supposed to be is this schizoid quality. A scene in which practical ways to kill Veronica Lake so that it'll look like suicide are casually discussed is chilling, yet also a bit peculiar because half the time, she's in the kind of movie where something as genuinely nasty as that wouldn't even be mentioned. So all in all, it's a flawed and somewhat muddled film worth watching because the good bits outweigh the bad bits, and there are one and a half great performances.
4 out of 4 members found this review helpful.
Hired Gun. - This Gun for Hire review by Steve
Exciting espionage thriller which is the first of four features to co-star Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. He actually gets an introducing credit, but plays the lead role of a hired gun paid off with hot money after he executes a contract for a big chemical firm. So the double crossed killer goes in search of revenge in high places.
As the shady corporation is working for the Japanese in WWII, there is opportunity for pro-US propaganda. But this is best as a pre-noir crime drama. Ladd's performance as the executioner is chilling and a prototype for the emotionally numb screen hit man. With that personal kink that almost makes him sympathetic.
The plot is no more plausible than the Graham Greene novel, but it does share a little of its psychological complexity and is well cast, with Tully Marshall extraordinarily disturbing as the frail leader of the fifth columnists. Ladd and Lake share an instant rapport which eclipses top billed Robert Preston as the cop. Despite the gunman being pretty psycho...
The Los Angeles locations bring a touch of realism, and John Seitz (who shot Double Indemnity) gives the interiors a satisfying noir look. Frank Tuttle's direction is assured rather than inspired, but he keeps the diffuse narrative coherent enough; this is a spy thriller with musical numbers! And a sort of a wannabe Hitchcock thriller.
0 out of 0 members found this review helpful.