THIS GUN FOR HIRE (1942) ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Frank Tuttle
Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, Robert Preston,
Tully Marshall, Laird Cregar, Marc Lawrence,
Pamela Blake, Frank Ferguson, Roger Imhof
Alan Ladd is one of those 1940s movie stars who looks like he was born wearing a fedora and a trench coat. In his first starring role, he plays a hit man called Raven, who does a job and gets paid off in counterfeit money. With the cops closing in, he teams up with a nightclub singer (Veronica Lake) to go after the guys who set him up, who, it turns out, are dealing chemical secrets to the Japanese. A tense, efficient thriller, released at a time when even a hard-boiled assassin could be called on to do his part for the war effort. That's a cool-looking trench coat and fedora, too.
