ST. JAMES THEATRE

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 19, 17 October 1942, Page 10

ST. JAMES THEATRE

The scene is a bedroom in a frowsy San Francisco tenement. A .kitten closed window. A young man with the haunted eyes of the slums, opens the window, coaxes inside and pours it a saucer of milk. A frowsy maid comee in shoos the kitten out. The young man s eves blaze. He strikes the girl across th® face with brutal force. • Slut, he cries, and flings her through the door „ ... In that three minutes. !■ rank 1 little, brilliant director of This Gun f °r sums up the warped incomprehensible character of Raven, killer, megalomaniac, orphan. He has all the specious sentimentality and brazen brutality of Hitler, the man who can weep at Beetho'mn » n h -lorv the next moment in the slaughter of the men he called friends. „ Based on the story by Graham Greene, the film is a study in the psychopathy of murder A voung man, ill-treated in youth and earlv typed as an habitual criminal, is paid for a killing in "hot money. From that moment he bends all the ef-

forts of his narrow, cunning, remorseless brain to the job of- killing his employer. This pursuit forms the plot and the tact that the employer is also a Fifth Columnist, badly wanted by the police, is really accidental to it. . The presence of Aeronica Lake as a young night-club entertainer with a fine line in magic increases rather than slower un the pace of this eventful film. It moves purposefully and with increasing momentum, as a good pursuit film should. This Gun for Hire” marks the film debut of Alan Ladd an event that will be looked back on with interest in the not-far-distant days when he is a top-rank star—tor that he (will undoubtedly be. Veronica Lake has never acted to better advantage, and Laird Cregar helps the show enormous!} with a memorably performance.