Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

BroadcastChic Excellent, a Must See

Infamousta brilliant actors, brilliant editing

2freensel I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

bkoganbing Robert Ivers and Georgeann Johnson never quite had the careers that were predicted for them in the introduction to this film by their director. But both give a reasonably competent road show adaption of the Paramount classic This Gun For Hire. Short Cut To Hell also stars William Bishop in the role of the San Francisco cop played originally by Robert Preston who is on the trail to Los Angeles looking for a killer.The whole wartime angle in This Gun For Hire is dropped for this 1957 film. Instead it's a contract killing of civil servant Peter Baldwin who is about to expose some shady dealings in building contracting. But as in the original he's paid off in hot money from a faked robbery with serial numbers duly recorded and reported to the police.For the most part the film follows the plot of This Gun For Hire even using a lot of the same lines. Jacques Aubuchon plays the Laird Cregar part of the fixer and he has the same aversion against seeing any of the violence he pays for.A.C. Lyles who later became famous for producing all those B westerns with past their prime players produced this film and got none other than James Cagney to direct it in his only credit in that department. Cagney never went behind the camera again.But I doubt even with the original cast of This Gun For Hire that he could have improved on what Frank Tuttle did in 1942.

MartinHafer This is a very unusual film for two reasons. First, it's directed by James Cagney--the actor. It's his only film as a director. Second, when the film begins, it opens with Cagney himself addressing the audience about the film. And, to prove that he IS the director, he stands next to a chair with "James Cagney. Director" written on it! The movie is a remake of "This Gun for Hire". To me, this is an odd choice, as the Alan Ladd film was very good and very famous. Cagney already had an uphill job as director putting across his own version of a film that is already a familiar classic.Like "This Gun for Hire", this film is about an assassin that does some killings for a horrible man. When he is paid off, the stupid guy sets up the assassin to get arrested--a very, very bad idea. That's because the killer escapes. Now, he knows he's been set up and is out to exact revenge. And, along the way, he kidnaps a woman and forces her to go along for the ride.The film isn't bad, but you can't help but think that the originals, Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake were simply better. Instead, Cagney uses complete unknowns--and his introductory remarks come off like he's almost apologizing for using them and insists they are exceptional actors. Well, considering that unlike Ladd and Lake, they did NOT go one to great careers in films, we must assume Cagney was mistaken. Overall, a decent film (since the plot is very good) but a relatively uninspired film and one you could easily skip. Of interest mostly because of its Cagney angle.This film, I give a 5. The original is strong and earns an 8.

secondtake Short Cut to Hell (1957)A strained effort all around, including James Cagney giving a personal introduction standing next to an imposing movie camera, assuring us his two new leading actors were terrific, before we get a chance to see for ourselves. We can wonder about his motivations, but on the surface two things seem clear. One, he's trying to move from being an actor to being a director (he sort of says he's getting too old to act, interestingly). And two, he's going about it in a cheap and sort of safe way, as if Hollywood knew it wasn't going to go very far.The result is pretty awful in enough ways to say you might just skip it. I'm a junkie for noir films, and "This Gun for Hire" is a true, early, formative classic from 1942. That one, with Alan Ladd in the lead, and Veronica Lake and Laird Cregar as support, is terrific in all the little ways that add up to something uniquely memorable, even in the hands of little known director Frank Tuttle. Now, fifteen years later, Cagney in his first and last directorial effort, remakes Tuttle's version. He sometimes matches it scene for scene (a few curious substitutions, like an air raid shelter instead of an empty railroad car) and actor for actor (the man taking Cregar's role seems to be vainly imitating him). And he leaves out a few of the key quirks that made the original more, well, original and disturbing (like Ladd's relationship to cats). One stark difference is the different kind of female character Cagney casts, avoiding the sultry version of Veronica Lake for a very Doris Day kind of lead. And it's probably telling that these terrific new actors Cagney is using had very little in the way of careers after this. Cagney did act in a few more films, living until 1986.If you have little patience, I think you might not make it through the first painful scene of a woman overacting her weariness in the motel hallway, but that's not fair. It does have faster and more interesting moments. In general, the filming and lighting has brightened up, losing at least the noir visual quality, maybe keeping its tonal range in line for television rebroadcast (an important concern by the late 1950s). If you want to know the possibilities of the story at its best, start with Graham Greene's 1936 book (A Gun for Sale) and then to the seminal 1942 movie. Short Cut to Hell is an asterisk at beset, a curiosity.

dbdumonteil Robert Ivers ,mainly in the first part ,gives an impressive performance:impassive ,deadpan,cold as ice ,he will make you shiver with his robotic swagger.When he kills the secretary after her boss,the directing(and performance) seems years ahead of its time.Ditto for the scene in the restaurant where his "client" is savoring mint chocolates or later in the train where he meets the chanteuse.The problem lies in this singer's character:the courageous young girl,who feels for the unfortunate killer who's got a raw deal,whose drunkard of a father treated him so bad he could be nothing but an outlaw etc etc etc.After an offbeat and intriguing first part,the movie turns predictable and the "moving" ending is business as usual.