This Gun for Hire

This re-make of the 1942 Alan Ladd-Veronica Lake film noir was surprisingly good. Unlike the original, it had color but it still had a good film noir feel, look and sound to it. The story had a few moralistic holes in it, but nothing big enough to ruin the film.

Robert Wagner was great to watch as the hit-man "Raven," actually more interesting than Ladd who played the same role. Wagner played the character accurately: a grim, no-smile kind of guy. Wagner, as people have seen in the popular Austin Powers movies, is not the young, slim, pretty boy most of us remember from the later classic movie era and that was good for this role. A few lines on his face made him more believable.

The film also had very little profanity, almost like an older made-for-TV film, yet it had its share of nudity so it maybe it was made for cable-TV. Don't look for a bunch of big name actors in this film. The rest of main characters are played by Nancy Everhard, Frederic Lehne and John Harkins.

At any rate, I enjoyed this and would like to see more of these updated 40s film noirs if they are done as well as this one.

Robert Wagner plays a hit-man, Raven, who is hired to kill a man whom he thinks is a commonplace-average hit. Unbeknownst to Raven the hit is no ordinary Joe, but a US Senator and Raven has been set up to take the fall. He takes Anne, a stripper played by Nancy Everhard, hostage while attempting to elude the authorities who have initiated a massive manhunt for him. He also attempts to figure out who set him up and why. His attempt to evade the cops and figure out what really went down is one plot which the viewer may assume is the central plot, while what may seem a subplot, Raven's interaction with Anne and what perchance may really matter in life to him, actually becomes the main plot of the film. Raven's complexity (he is not the one dimensional character one would assume), and how this is developed in the film is done very well.

Wagner convincingly portrays Raven as a (40s to mid 60s) middle-aged, cold, hard, hit-man. He does not have the cherubic boyish appearance we associate with him; he is quite convincing in the role. Like Wagner, Nancy Everhard at 33 or 34 may have been at the upper age range for a modern stripper, but like Wagner, she appears younger and pulls it off very well. While watching the movie, one sees Raven and Anne, not Wagner and Everhard. Casting of the supporting cast is excellent, especially the slimy local politicians. The French Quarter is an appropriate locale and is used to advantage.

This was a made for TV film, but is certainly as good as any of its genre released theatrically in the last several decades.

This is a good movie. The New Orleans French Quarter helps bring a Film Noir feel to the movie despite its modern setting and boxy, insubstantial looking eighties cars. The French Quarter almost attained the status of another character in the film giving the audience the feeling that it could not have taken place anywhere else. Ironically those physical aspects of New Orleans that made it so vulnerable to Hurricane Katrina (the sense that it is surrounded by water, severely limiting escape), also contributed to the feeling that Raven the assassin was hemmed in, with little chance for escape.

Robert Wagner (Raven) was an odd choice to play the grim contract killer, since there was little (no) call for his All-American smile which had served him so well for a long time (in fact for sixty years). He was remarkably effective and believable in the role. His character was forty to forty-five-years-old, and with the help of a lot of noir, Wagner pulled it off. His presence was sufficiently masculine and powerful that you were able to believe that his thirty-three-year-old hostage, Anne (Nancy Everhard) was falling in love with him and he with her. A significant facial scar and sixty years helped Wagner overcome the image of a pretty boy which also afflicted Alan Ladd who originated the role in the original 1942 classic.

Raven was as cold-blooded a killer as you will see in the movies that pretend to be somewhat realistic (ie. non-slasher). His highlighted soft spot for kittens and his allowing a little girl to live despite her having the ability to identify him, only served to make his remorseless brutality more stark in comparison. Yet the moment when he crossed the line into having feelings for Anne was compelling and made the emerging sexual tension between them palpable. Instead of being a gritty crime drama with a dash of sex thrown in, this film evolved into a love story set against a backdrop of violence and corruption.

The aspect of the film requiring the most suspension of disbelief was not Robert Wagner's age, nor the fact that his hostage was falling in love with him. It was the fact that even in a post-Hoover F.B.I., it would be unlikely for an agent to marry a Bourbon Street stripper. However Nancy Everhard made me believe that he would not only marry her but would probably consider it a signal honor. She was rivetingly female and attractive in a way that transcended the tawdriness implied in her profession - almost in spite of the fact that she was a stripper.

This movie is a success because of a lot of things including good writing (based on a Graham Greene novel), good acting including the performance by John Harkins as Boynton, in whom treachery and lechery combined to give us a character that not only made my skin crawl but made it want to crawl off into a scalding shower with a wire brush. Raven brutally killed several people without any apparent compassion, yet by the end of the film I was rooting for him and Anne just as I would root for James Bond or Indiana Jones.

At the risk of making more of it, philosophically, than it is, this movie depicted almost total amorality and the ability to love to the point of life sacrifice within one man. The complexities of this evolving change is made more interesting as Raven's cold, emotionless professionalism is relentlessly taken over by his increasingly emotional reactions in desperate situations. As his professional detachment deteriorates, so does his situation, and so do his chances.