"This Gun For Hire" is an excellent early film noir with an intriguing storyline and some memorable performances, especially from Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. The screenplay by W.R. Burnett and Albert Maltz was adapted from Graham Greene's novel "A Gun For Sale" and incorporates a heady mixture of blackmail, murder, betrayal, revenge, espionage and treason to ensure that the excitement never flags. This movie's famous for propelling Alan Ladd to star status and also features the first appearance of the now legendary Ladd-Lake partnership.

The opening scenes quickly establish that Phillip Raven (Alan Ladd) is a ruthless hit man who loves cats but has absolutely no compunction about violently attacking a maid without any real provocation. After killing a chemist who'd been blackmailing the Nitro Chemical Corporation (NCC) and having been paid by their employee, Willard Gates (Laird Cregar), he discovers that he's been paid in marked bills and that the police have been informed that the money was stolen from the NCC. Predictably, this sets Raven off in pursuit of Gates so that he can take revenge as swiftly as possible.

Gates also runs "The Neptune Club" where he employs an entertainer called Ellen Graham (Veronica Lake). By coincidence, Ellen is the fiancée of Police Lieutenant Michael Crane (Robert Preston), who's been put in charge of tracking down the alleged thief.

Raven's pursuit of Gates leads him to take a train journey to LA during which he meets Ellen. When Gates sees that Raven's on the train, he notifies the police but Raven's successful escape leads to a sequence of events which culminate in Ellen persuading Raven to abandon his quest for deadly revenge and to take a course of action which ultimately brings an end to the NCC's involvement in a plot to sell a secret poison gas formula to one of the US's wartime enemies.

Alan Ladd is very impressive as the cold, laconic, psychopathic killer who hates and distrusts everyone and never shows any sign of humour or emotion. The root of his personality disorder lies in his appalling childhood experiences which he describes to Ellen whose manner towards him draws out an element of trust which he, almost certainly, hasn't ever shown to anyone else before in his adult life.

Ellen is the most compelling character in the story as she's not only a singer, dancer and magician but also Crane's fiancée, Raven's confidante, Gates' employee and an agent who's been employed by the government to gather evidence about the traitorous activities of the NCC, Willard Gates and the corporation's evil boss, Alvin Brewster (Tully Marshall). Veronica Lake displays a kind of cool composure which is very engaging and the level of warmth which she shows towards Raven in finely balanced and proves to be precisely what's required to gain his trust.

Laird Cregar provides good support as the fat, slimy Gates who's hooked on peppermints and perfectly happy to be an agent of death even though he has no stomach for violence himself. Tully Marshall also gives a very colourful performance as an elderly invalid who's irredeemably wicked and wheelchair bound but also a powerful and traitorous top industrialist. John Seitz's cinematography with its expert use of shadows perfectly enhances the sense of menace and distrust which seems to pervade the whole movie and the fact that it remains so interesting and entertaining so many years after it was made is strong evidence of its considerable quality.

Both Alan Ladd and Tyrone Power made their film debuts in 1932's Tom Brown of Culver; by 1936, Power was a star. It took Alan Ladd a long 10 years and something like 40 films to make it, but make it he did as a cat-loving contract killer in "This Gun for Hire," also starring Veronica Lake, Laird Cregar and Robert Preston. Ladd plays Phillip Raven, a contract killer in San Francisco who is hired to "off" a blackmailer and retrieve a formula from him. What he doesn't know is that his employers paid him in marked bills and then reported him to the police as the killer of the man, hoping to get him out of the way. Their plan is to sell the formula to the Germans. A Senate committee is suspicious of one of the traitors, a night-club owner named Willard Gates (Cregar) and send in a performer, Ellen Graham (Lake) to work undercover for them, unbeknownst to her LA policeman boyfriend (Preston). Graham and Raven are mistakenly connected by Gates, and soon both are on the run from him.

"This Gun for Hire" is thickly plotted but nevertheless somehow holds the viewer's interest, most likely because of the characterizations. The diminutive, beautiful Lake is an absolute delight as a singer with a magician routine. As one of the villains, Laird Cregar creates an excellent character - a hugely built fraidy-cat who abhors violence. And Ladd's Phillip Raven, vicious though he is, is a man who learned in childhood not to trust anyone and not to get too close to anyone. He's a sad character - and this is as close to acting from Ladd as you'll get. In future films, he says his lines in a monotone, though his tough guy persona is very effective. Here, he plays a ruthless man given to outbursts as well as depression. His paired with Lake, which perhaps was continued because she was a good height for him, is heaven-sent - these are two noir actors who fit the genre perfectly, if for different reasons.

"This Gun for Hire" makes for compelling drama, but it's sad to watch as well. Cregar died two years after the film's release, at the age of 28, with what would have been a great career lost; after a failed suicide attempt (his mother was a suicide), Ladd would die of an alcohol and drug overdose at the age of 51; and the rage with her peek-a-boo hairdo, Lake, by the '50s, would be an alcoholic working as a bartender in a hotel before dying at age 54. You could say this is a "curse" film, but one can say that about so many - the lives of the people who made these classics just weren't fun. A shame, because they left us with such great work.

Phillip Raven (Alan Ladd) is a hit-man hired by Willard Gates (Laird Cregar) to execute the blackmailer Albert Baker (Frank Ferguson) and retrieve a letter and some documents for his unknown boss. When the work is done, Raven is double-crossed by Gates, receiving marked ten dollar bills. Gates delivers the list with the serial number of the bills to the police, expecting they find and kill Raven. Meanwhile, the performer Ellen Graham (Veronika Lake), who is the fiancée of the L.A Detective Lieutenant Michael Crane (Robert Preston), is contacted by Senator Burnett (Roger Imhof) and asked to help investigating Gates. She accepts the invitation, and is hired by Gates to work in his private club in Los Angeles. The police force, leaded by Det. Crane, chases Raven for the death of Baker; Raven chases Gates and his unknown boss, expecting to kill them for their betrayal; Ellen secretly chases Gates for the government. This is the beginning of a great classic. Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake have fantastic performances in this movie. Alan Ladd is magnificent in the role of a cold blood killer, needy of a friend, that loves cats. In order to show the personality of his character, there is a scene in the beginning of the story, where he almost shoots a crippled girl to eliminate any possible witness of his murder. Veronika Lake is wonderful and very gorgeous, inclusive singing two songs. I disagree with the reference of film-noir for "This Gun For Hire", since there is no "femme-fatale", no dirty cop, no weak man (other than Gates) or sordid motivation. Indeed it is a police story, showing a cold-blood hit-man without compassion, capable of killing without showing any emotion, hunting "worse guys" looking for his personal vengeance. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Alma Torturada" ("Tortured Soul")