Film

This Gun for Hire

Name: This Gun for Hire
Genre: Crime, Thriller, Mystery
Released: 1942
Cast: Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, Robert Preston, Laird Cregar, Tully Marshall

Alan Ladd's icy breakout as a friendless contract killer chasing the boss who double-crossed him, with Veronica Lake as the woman who gets tangled in his revenge. Brisk, moody, wartime-shadowed noir that turns a killer into something close to a wounded animal you can't help watching. Under 90 minutes, all nerve and slow-burn dread.

TMDb rating

3.5

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like tight, cynical crime pictures where a chilly anti-hero and a wary, sharp-tongued woman spar through shadowy rooms and every line has a hard edge.

Skip it if the hero is a cold, unpleasant man for much of it, so if you need someone to root for from the first frame, the chill may wear thin.

What it asks of you: Only 81 minutes, but it moves in clipped, purposeful scenes with plenty of silences, so it rewards close attention rather than half-watching.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Double Indemnity1944

Billy Wilder's razor-sharp scheme-and-betray plot gave the genre its blueprint, with dialogue so quotable it still sounds contemporary and a femme fatale who out-cools everyone in the room.

But The insurance-fraud plotting takes its time getting going, and the middle stretch can feel talkier than thrilling.

The Killers1946

Burt Lancaster's screen debut as a hitman waiting calmly for his own execution gives you the flip side of Raven's cornered rage — same doom, different temperature.

But The flashback structure fractures the story into overlapping pieces, and following the timeline takes real patience.

Out of the Past1947

Robert Mitchum drags his past into a small-town present and can't outrun it, in what's often called the most purely fatalistic noir ever made.

But The double-crosses stack up fast enough that you may need a second watch to track who's conning whom.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from This Gun for Hire

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Le Samouraï1967

Jean-Pierre Melville built his entire style of contract killer directly out of American films like this one — the same trench-coated, near-silent hitman, stripped down to pure ritual.

Alain Delon plays the archetype Ladd originated with even less emotion and more elegance, in a film that practically invented the modern assassin-as-monk image cinema still keeps returning to.

But It's almost wordless and glacially paced — if you want plot momentum, this will frustrate you.

The Maltese Falcon1941

Bogart's cynical private eye and a gallery of grotesques circling a worthless black statue basically wrote the rulebook this whole genre still plays by even today.

But Its plot mechanics are pure MacGuffin — what happens matters far less than who's doing it to whom.

Kiss of Death1947

Richard Widmark's giggling, wheelchair-shoving psychopath is the era's other unforgettable killer, a performance so gleefully unsettling that it launched his entire career playing monsters afterward.

But The moralising ex-con protagonist is far squarer than Raven, and the finale leans more sentimental than noir usually allows.

Gilda1946

Rita Hayworth owns a smoky nightclub and every man orbiting around it, in a noir that trades hitmen for something just as dangerous — pure obsession.

But It's more melodrama than thriller, with far less violence and much more simmering psychological cruelty between its leads.

Notorious1946

Hitchcock takes the same wartime espionage undertow running beneath Raven's story and turns it into a slow-burning romance where trust itself becomes the sharpest weapon.

But It's a slower burn overall, more interested in glances and poisoned coffee cups than in gunplay.

The Blue Dahlia1946

Ladd and Lake reteam for another moody wartime murder mystery, this time with a returning veteran instead of a hired gun at its restless centre.

But The mystery plot was reportedly reshuffled under wartime censorship pressure, and it shows in a slightly patched-together ending.

Ministry of Fear1944

Fritz Lang folds the same wartime paranoia into a stranger, more nightmarish register — a man freshly released from an asylum stumbles into a spy ring.

But It's looser and odder than a straight noir, closer to a fever dream than a tight thriller.

Killing Eve2018

Swap the cornered male hitman for a stylish female assassin and the detective chasing him for an obsessive officer, and you get the same fascinated, dangerous closeness Raven and Ellen share — stretched into a whole series.

It takes the hunter-hunted intimacy at the heart of this story and turns it comic, queasy, and genuinely funny, all without ever losing the danger.

But The tonal whiplash between dark comedy and real violence isn't for everyone, and later seasons lose the thread.

John Wick2014

Same engine as Raven's story — a professional killer betrayed by the people who employed him, burning down their entire organisation in revenge — just cranked up to operatic, balletic extremes.

If you want the same double-crossed-hitman-on-a-rampage plot but stripped of all restraint, this delivers pure kinetic spectacle instead of Raven's clipped, watchful menace, with a body count to match.

But It has zero interest in Ellen-style redemption arcs — it's essentially wall-to-wall action with a paper-thin emotional core.