NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

Bluebell Alcock Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Ginger Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

clanciai One of those ideal thrillers you just have to return to for getting brushed up now and then, with Alan Ladd entering film history with his very reticent and restricted way of acting adding to his menacing toughness, and Veronica Lake sailing up as the first great romantic queen of the 40s. The story is even by Graham Greene, although geographically moved from England to California and involving much greater business and world affairs than just a gun for hire; but the Greene atmosphere is definitely there, marked especially by small details, such as the invalid girl dropping her ball (what eyes!) and the dinosaur landlady. To crown it all, there is Laird Cregar in one of his too few but the more impressing performances, here as an over-sensitive crook who orders murders about but can't stand blood. Robert Preston plays a minor part as the police but is quite convincing, getting mixed up with his passions for his girl Veronica and what justice demands. It's a noir and a tragedy, but such an entrance into film history by Alan Ladd just had to make him a milesone of a film star.

joanna-105 After watching this film I'll go ahead and throw it out there: Ladd was a better actor than Humphrey Bogart. There, I've said it. I saw almost everything Bogart and Ladd did and I must say, I find Alan Ladd a lot more believable in his delivery and expressions. I think he was just ahead of his time with the understated acting. He didn't grimace much but you knew what was going on in his head just the same. He also didn't have a lot of luck with his scrips later on in his carrier (unlike Bogart). I think he also lacked some of the confidence Bogie had on screen (and off). I don't know why, since he was significantly better looking than Bogie (and only 1 inch shorter). He would have been great in, for example, Casablanca. If you don't believe me, just take a listen to the Lux radio version, where Ladd plays Rick and delivers the iconinc lines. He would have been a lot more believable as Ms. Bergman's love interest than over-the-hill, lisping, hunched over Bogie. Too bad.... Before the mostly dismal 50-ies in Ladd's carrier, however, there was his "noir period" and "This Gun for Hire". All elements of this movie work well together. Script and direction are decent (some of the dialogues are not the best, except perhaps when delivered by Ladd), music is great! (I recommend getting the main theme: classic noir score), photography and sets are very bleak and gritty (very: "noir"). Supporting cast is good and Veronica Lake seems slightly less "wooden" than usual, especially when playing opposite Ladd. I don't know why they had to squeeze in two, very forgettable lip synced song numbers by Ms. Lake, but other than that the action moved at a good pace. Overall, I enjoyed this movie not only for the style (noir) but because I genuinely cared what happened to Raven (Ladd's character).

bob the moo I have been trying to mix up what I watch recently – I watch far too much television and too many "easy" modern films so it doesn't hurt to dip back some decades and into different genres. Based on material from Graham Greene and with Alan Ladd in his first starring role, this film is considered a classic and has plenty of praise here, so I was quite looking forward to seeing it. The plot sees a hit-man (Raven) betrayed by his bosses and looking for revenge. Meanwhile the subject of his revenge (Gates) is busy hiring a showgirl in San Francisco to work in his club in LA. Unbeknownst to him this showgirl (Ellen) is the girlfriend of the cop charged with capturing Raven (due to him being set up by Gates). Unbeknownst to any of them, Ellen also has another side gig, as she has been recruited by Senator Burnett to use her new job as cover to try and get information about possible treasonous activities that gates and his employer may be up to.As you can see from above, there is a lot of plot here and it could so easily have been unwieldy and out of control, but it isn't in this case. Instead it is incredibly compact and tidy – far too tidy in fact, as the film relies so much on coincidence and convenience to keep things moving. So for example we have the officer chasing Raven being the partner of Ellen, then we have Ellen and Raven both on the same train to go see Gates – but not just the same train, but seats next to one another. This throws them together so the rest of the film can play out, but it is also rather filled with bits of writing that don't really convince in reality and seem just too convenient. I'm not sure how closely this sticks to Greene's original material, but I'm guessing it is not too closely. The story still flows along reasonably well but it is tidy to a fault and it hurts how much I could get into the material.What helped it though is the tough tone throughout. We open with a guy looking after a kitten but yet slapping around a maid before going onto murder people in cold blood – a character we're used to seeing nowadays but quite the antihero even for the genre and period. The other lead is a woman who is more together than her cop boyfriend (who does his bit but is in her shadow) and this is also a nice dynamic as, although she is not a total mould breaker, she isn't defined by the men around her. The cast do well with the material – Ladd in particular is ruthlessly cold and rarely shows even a bit of humanity, indeed that small act of kindness we see early in the film is cancelled out quite shockingly later on. Lake is pretty good; she has the looks and generally is engaging but some of the narrative dialogue is clunky and she can't do much with it. Cregar steals every scene he is in with his villain so cowardly and slimy that it nearly comes out of the screen. Preston's Crane is OK but on the edge of the film.This film has plenty of praise and I was really quite disappointed by how much of the story either didn't ring true (why would they put the police onto Raven in the first place rather than just getting the job done properly?) or was filled with convenience and tidiness for the sake of events whether it was likely or not. The atmosphere makes it worth watching though and the performances of Ladd and Cregar in particular. Shame the story is really very weak though.

chaos-rampant Here's the problem; this is an ordinary crime flick injected at the center with a brooding noir protagonist. A man whose fate is always a little out of reach, because it was set in motion when he was still a kid, so he cannot settle down, cannot not shoot his gun even when he has promised, and pretty much he only wants to lay down and sleep.Now imagine this man dreaming up a woman, a ravishing blonde straight out of a dream, who just so happens to be a stage magician who can make things vanish into thin air. Imagine this as a dream where she makes his suffering go away, but first he has to concede to be a part of her staged show. Imagine all this flowing from the key exchange where he tells her of his dream so he won't have to dream about it anymore, or so he's told.It takes place in a gas works by night, really the dark side of the mind, a lot of cavernous architecture where he confesses innermost self, with the search-lights of the waking world outside looking for him.And notice, even more pertinently than anything else, that the tricks she performs to the stunned cabaret patrons are only possible because they're in on it, being actors on a movie set, and assist the trick in plain sight of us, all the while feigning surprised reactions. This would be a marvellous way to nod in the direction of the cinematic sleight-of-hand.I say imagine.. because the film has little time for all this. It plays out a straight comic-book style plot. The wartime lesson is that every man, even this hardened crook, must do his part to assist the national effort. In the last scene he is restated as a tragic hero who offered noble service, but of course is no longer there to receive his medal.Imagine this as Lady of Shanghai pulp in the hands of Welles.. there's no doubt in my mind it would be one of the best films of the decade.