The greatest movie ever!

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Unfortunately, Bray's bland version of iconic Mike Hammer can't hold together an over-extended 90-minutes. I might have responded differently had the actor evinced more than one emotionless expression and ditched that perfect wardrobe right out of Gentleman's Quarterly. Then too, there's that meandering screenplay whose threads come and go-- but crucially fail to weave anything like good suspense. Now, I'm no fan of the Cold War's "a slug in the commie gut" Mickey Spillane, but the movie as a whole fails to project his particular brand of blue-collar gusto. And that's despite the many half-clad babes that parade in and out. Also, looks to me like the screenplay goes awkwardly out of its way to emphasize Hammer's principled core. That's probably to reassure 50's audiences that this is not Spillane's ethically challenged version. In that sense, the movie's a somewhat revisionist working of the decade's favorite PI.Still the movie manages a few positives, especially Jan Chaney's beautifully shaded performance as a forlorn hooker named Red. It's one of the more subtly soulful turns I've seen. Note too how that same opening scene registers Hammer immediately as a tough guy but with heart. Then there's a good traveling look at LA's notorious freeways, which must have been an early morning shoot before the system-wide jam starts. Note too,the big glimpse of 50's upscale decor. No wonder this Hammer only parades around in fine suits. And I liked that imaginative junkyard set-up that proves even recyclables can be a menace. What the movie really needs however is a strong touch of style. I'm just sorry proved stylists like those of of Kiss Me Deadly (1955) didn't have a hand in this pedestrian production. As things stand, the programmer remains an appropriately obscure entry in an otherwise durable franchise.

"Additional music composer" for MY GUN IS QUICK was the first film job held by John Towner Williams, then 25 years old, and later of JAWS, STAR WARS, INDIANA JONES, SCHINDLER'S LIST, etc., etc. fame. Most of William's work between MGIQ and JAWS was for television (Gilligan's Island, and so forth), though he might have made a few feature film ripples with the Gidget series. However, I think most movie-goers may have first encountered this Max Steiner of his day with the score of the drive-in thriller, DADDY'S GONE A-HUNTING (1969), to which Williams contributed. Personally, I found the score for MY GUN IS QUICK overbearing, on a par with the whole needlessly brazen sound design and Robert Bray's testosterone-laden crude caricature of a Sam Spade-type private eye. However, I suppose for some people the crass, cheap, brassy knock-off civilian investigator Mickey Spillane offered with his Mike Hammer character is preferable to the greater thought put into Dashiell Hammett's anti-hero earlier, or the compelling libertarian sentiments John D. McDonald set forth later with his Travis McGee character. So the crude MGIQ soundtrack serves as sort of a poor man's version of the far superior score for the Frank Sinatra vehicle, THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM, which opens with very similar percussion riffs.The plot of MY GUN IS QUICK is mighty convoluted, perhaps to cover the fact that the characterizations are paper-thin, with few likely to care about those peopling the silver screen therein. If DOUBLE INDEMNITY is a 10 in the pantheon of film noir achievement, MGIQ would be lucky to garner a rating of 2 or 3. Nevertheless, John Williams is SO important to the movie world, this misfire merits a "6" just on its status as an historical curiosity.

This is a very gritty low-budget Mickey Spillane film. Yet, despite having a no-name cast and every reason to believe it would stink, the film was very good and deserves to be seen. Robert Bray (who?!) plays Hammer--and plays him directly--without being handsome or bigger than life. This Mike Hammer was very human and very believable.The film begins with an exhausted Mike coming into a greasy spoon for a bite. There he meets a young lady who had dreams of making it big in Hollywood but who is forced to survive through prostitution. Despite this hard life, Mike feels sorry for her and after a brief talk, gives her money to take a train back home to her family in the Midwest. Later, he learns that she's dead--the supposed victim of a hit and run. Hammer knows better--and spends the rest of the film tracking down her killers. Oddly, this case turns out to be related to an old jewel robbery. How can they be connected and how can Mike avoid getting his brains beaten out....yet again.As I said above, this film is pretty good despite the budget. The story is excellent and the entire production works well because it seems pretty realistic and tough. A very good but relatively forgotten example of film noir that's worth seeing.

The quintessential Mike Hammer (Robert Bray), haggard, menacing, but essentially a decent guy in a dirty world inhabited by ruthless killers, gets involved in the murder of a young aspiring actress, who only the night before he had met at a lonely downtown diner, and had helped out with bus fare back to her native Nebraska. Her death was related to a piece of jewelry she was carrying, part of a cache of stolen war time jewels. Forced to get to the bottom of the murder, not for money but because of his connection to the girl, he unravels the mystery in the typical Hammer fashion of payoffs and beatings. Released two years after Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly, MGiQ is the poorer man's version, though it has its own charms, mostly in the way of the LA settings and Bray's portrayal, tired and unshaven, but with the determination of a pit bull.