***SPOILERS***Fairly decent re-make of the 1942 crime classic "This Gun for Hire" directed by, in his first and only attempt, James Cagney. It's the cat loving hit-man Kyle Niles, Robert Iver, who after murdering buildings inspector Carl Adams, Peter Baldwin, and his secretary in cold blood gets double-crossed by the person who hired him "Fat Man" Bharwell, Jacques Aubuchon, to get him out of the way. Giving Niles his cut in the double murders $1,000.00 he dropped a dime on him by informing the police that the money was stolen,and giving them a list of the bills serial numbers, which Bharwell in fact embezzled from his own construction business! Niles who soon found out about the "Fat Man's" back stabbing not taking this lying down is now determined to make him pay with his life for this dirty double-cross on his part!The film takes the same track as the original "This Gun for Hire" with Niles hooking up with this innocent bystander, while on the run from the police, Glory Hamilton,Georgann Johnson, who ends up not only falling in love but also humanizing the cold blooded killer. Who's only human emotion was when he accidentally killed a stray cat, who jumped on him in the dark, and then broke down and cried like a baby! With the police on his as well as Glory's, who helped him on every turn, tail Niles finally tracked down not only "Fat Man" Bahrwell but his boss crooked and criminal businessman AT, Richard Hale, at the AT Mansion.***SPOILERS*** It was a stroke of luck for Niles as well as later for the police and D.A's office in that AT had his tape recorder on when confronted by him that implicated him and "Fat Boy" in Adam and his secretary's murders. With nothing left for him now Niles makes a run for it after dispatching AT "Fat Man" and the house butler as well as torture freak Nichols, Murvyn Vye, on his run to freedom. Niles in a futile attempt of desperately trying to escape only gets gunned down by the police and ends up dying in Glory's arms who had tried to talk him into surrendering. A fitting ending for a man who after a life of crime & violence finally saw the light and in a strange way ended up redeeming himself!

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.

Jimmy Cagney directs a movie! ...and proves that he should stay in front of the camera. Here he remakes the respected though troubled hybrid (half noir, half thirties) This Gun for Hire. Why would he do that? Beats me. The cast is second-rate, and it looks like Cagney didn't have the patience for any complicated set-up. The anti-hero and his quarry mount a ladder in one shot and in the next shot, they've exchanged positions. How do you do that on a ladder? Lazy. Cagney settles for very lousy takes, and he hasn't any interest in logic. The bad guy lets his girl don his hat and jacket, and act as a decoy; to be shot at by police. Yeah, that's a great ruse.The female lead is some doughy-faced nobody who would captivate no one. You've seen better acting at your local high school. There might be one good shot in the whole movie. A gratuitous intro by Cagney is tacked on to persuade you you're seeing something of merit. But it's a B picture from start to finish.

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.