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This Gun For Hire [DVD] [1942]
 
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This Gun For Hire [DVD] [1942]

DVD ~ Alan Ladd
4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.98 & eligible for Free UK delivery on orders over £5 with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Frequently Bought Together

This Gun For Hire [DVD] [1942] + The Glass Key [DVD] [1942] + The Blue Dahlia [DVD]
Total RRP: £29.97
Price For All Three: £14.94

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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

This Gun For Hire [DVD] [1942]
67% buy the item featured on this page:
This Gun For Hire [DVD] [1942] 4.0 out of 5 stars (1)
£4.98
Film Noir Collection [DVD]
12% buy
Film Noir Collection [DVD] 4.4 out of 5 stars (9)
£17.98
The Blue Dahlia [DVD]
8% buy
The Blue Dahlia [DVD] 4.0 out of 5 stars (1)
£4.98
The Big Heat [DVD] [1953]
7% buy
The Big Heat [DVD] [1953] 4.9 out of 5 stars (7)
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Product details

  • Actors: Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, Robert Preston, Marc Lawrence
  • Directors: Frank Tuttle
  • Format: Black & White, PAL
  • Language English
  • Region: Region 2 (This DVD may not be viewable outside Europe. Read more about DVD formats.)
  • Number of discs: 1
  • Classification: PG
  • Studio: Universal Pictures UK
  • DVD Release Date: 12 Feb 2007
  • Run Time: 78 minutes
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • ASIN: B000KJT7QO
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 16,581 in DVD (See Bestsellers in DVD)

Reviews

Synopsis
In this classic film noir, tough-guy thriller, Alan Ladd plays Philip Raven, a double-crossed gunman who is out for revenge, with Veronica Lake as Ellen Graham, his platinum blond bombshell companion. A hired gun, Raven is kind to everyone but his targets, and when he kills an extortionist and receives stolen money in compensation, he becomes the target of a Senate investigation that leads him to set his gunsight on Ellen.

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Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)
 
 
 
 
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16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars A satisfying Ladd/Lake noir, 19 Aug 2007
By C. O. DeRiemer (San Antonio, Texas, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This is a straight-forward, linear, quick-moving story based on a much more interesting book. But it's still an entertaining movie, and probably close to required viewing if you enjoy noir and/or Forties movies.

Raven (Alan Ladd) is a hired killer, evidently without remorse or nerves, who is paid to knock off a blackmailer. The blackmailer was trying to take to the cleaners a corrupt industrialist who was coincidentally helping the enemy. (This is during WWII.) However, Raven is paid in counterfeit bills on the assumption the police will catch him when he spends the money. He discovers the plot and decides to take out the guy who hired him and the fellow, the industrialist, who was behind it all.

The movie bills Veronica Lake and Robert Preston above the title, Laird Cregar just below the title, and Alan Ladd last in big type as "Introducing Alan Ladd." Some introduction; according to IMDb, Ladd had already appeared in more than 40 films in unbilled and minor parts.

This was Ladd's breakthrough movie and he's very good in it. I don't think he was much of an actor, but he had a lot of star presence, especially in the movies he made in the Forties. There was always something passive but potentially dangerous about him. His looks could have kept him in the pretty boy category, but for whatever reason didn't. Veronica Lake, for me, is something of an acquired taste, but for whatever reason she and Ladd made an effective pairing that was repeated several times. Laird Cregar played the heavy, and he was an interesting actor. Big and fleshy, he was something of a Raymond Burr type but more versatile. Robert Preston is seldom mentioned in regard to this movie and this must have ticked him off. Here's a guy who usually played best friend of the lead, gets a good part as the lead in a solid movie -- and winds up being over-shadowed by Ladd.

The first five minutes or so of the movie are among the most efficient I've come across in establishing a major player's character and complexities. We first see Raven waking up in his rented rooms and checking the clock. Nothing out of the ordinary there. In very short order, however, he's taken a gun out, helped a stray kitten get into his room and given it some food, slapped hard and full in the face a maid who tried to kick out the cat, showed up at the blackmailer's place where he meets the blackmailer (who was supposed to be alone); the blackmailer has his "secretary" with him so he just kills them both; on the way out a little girl on the stairs asks him to get her ball which has rolled away; she sees his face, he obviously thinks about shooting her, too -- but gets the ball for her and leaves. In just a few minutes Raven's cold ruthlessness and his conflicts are established, and so is a sort of sympathy for him. These first few minutes, in my view, are what make the movie work.
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