Just perfect...

Excellent film with a gripping story!

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

An icy hit-man seeks revenge after being double-crossed by his employer.Catch those early scenes with an over-heated Vickers (Daisy). I don't know what director Cagney told her, but she does everything except kiss the camera. Given the generally slack results, I can see why Cagney never again directed. The movie itself is spotty, at best, with an erratic script and uneven acting. Johnson (Glory) and Aubuchon (Barhwell) are fine; however, lead actor Ivers (Kyle) lacks the gravitas to carry off the merciless hit-man. He looks a little like Cagney, but is a long way from the latter's compelling charisma. (Note how the physically slight Ivers wears a bulky trenchcoat in most scenes.) Of the two leads, it's really Georgann Johnson who has the strong presence. Note too, the subtle hints that Bahrwell might well be gay, rather daring innuendo for the time.Cagney's pretty good at staging. The industrial plant scenes are both eye-catchers and ominously suggestive. And I'm wondering whose lavish Hollywood estate was used for the finale. Speaking of the estate, the showdown is a lot tamer than I expected, given Bahrwell's slimy character. And shouldn't overlook the two execution scenes that are quite graphic, for the time. However, there are also two contrived implausibles—Glory donning Kyle's decoy outfit even though she's certain to get shot; plus, thug Nichols' (Vye) recovering quickly with hardly a mark after a savage beating. Neither is well thought out.Not surprisingly, Johnson went on to a very respectable TV career, while it looks like Ivers never again had a lead role. Fortunately, Cagney went back to what he did best—acting. All in all, the movie fails to have any lasting impact despite the strong premise. It's definitely not the best version of novelist Greene's This Gun For Hire.

The first and only movie directed by James Cagney is a remake of the 1942 classic THIS GUN FOR HIRE starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. This time the gun for hire is Kyle Niles played by Robert Ivers. The pro hit-man is hired to commit two murders and ends up kidnapping sultry singer Glory Hamilton(Georgann Johnson)while seeking revenge on his boss(Jacques Aubuchon), a conniving gangster named Bahrwell, who paid him off in stolen money. Glory will end up helping Kyle after Bahrwell and his flunky(Murvyn Vye)rough her up. Meanwhile Glory's cop boyfriend, Sgt. Stan Lowery(William Bishop), is racing the clock with his every effort to find her before she is killed. Story line and editing is above par and the best acting comes from Johnson, who shows some humor while being a kidnap victim. This film shot entirely in Los Angeles features supporting roles by Peter Baldwin, Yvette Vickers and Richard Hale. Mr. Cagney's efforts are not shabby at all.

Not TOO many spoilers but better safe than sorry!I love James Cagney the actor and was looking forward to seeing something from James Cagney the director. Unfortunately, Mr. Cagney was no Charles Laughton. Since most people interested in this film are probably Cagney fans, I will cover the direction first. Cagney had one strike against him going into this: he was remaking a popular classic, This Gun for Hire. That film launched Alan Ladd as a star, solidified Veronica Lake's popularity and created a powerful (albeit diminutive) screen team. (Plot for both films: A hit-man does a job but is double-crossed by his employers by being paid off in hot, marked bills. On the run from the police for a robbery he didn't commit, the hit-man plans revenge. His only lead; a fat man who loves pretty women and peppermints. Meanwhile, a nightclub singer gets caught in the middle, first as one of the hit-man's intended murder victims, then as his hostage and finally as his friend/girlfriend/mother/sister figure.) Remaking a popular and successful film meant that Cagney had to work twice as hard to meet or surpass the original material. There is not a single scene that works more effectively in this remake than in the original. However, the movie has flaws that are evident even if you have never seen This Gun for Hire. One of the main problems of this film is the pacing. Suspenseful scenes are rushed along while dull ones are allowed to linger.A few scenes do have interesting camera work but the novice director seems enamored of this and pushes is a bit too far and long. Then there is the woeful hamminess and just plain bad acting. The leads aren't terrible, just not that good. Robert Ivers is OK as the hit-man but he doesn't come off as dangerous as he should. Alan Ladd had this frostiness that served him well in tough guy roles. Ivers is less glacial and more petulant. Further, the script waters down his character. You see, in the original novel, the hit-man had a cleft lip. In This Gun for Hire, it was turned into a disfiguring arm injury, the result of child abuse at the hands of his aunt. This bid to preserve Ladd's handsome face actually turned into a powerful character trait. In Short Cut to Hell, the hit-man's important physical trait is that he is a bit small. That's it. By giving the hit-man a very distinguishing feature, the novel and the original film made his plight more desperate. This was a man who could not just disappear. You can issue a general call for men with cleft palates and mangled arms. Being a small-ish just doesn't cut it. You can hardly have a police dragnet looking for all small-ish men. Robert Ivers was 5'8" according to IMDb. Hardly lilliputian. As for the heroine, Georgann Johnson acts well enough but her demeanor is too "gosh-gee-whiz" for the dark material. Veronica Lake (Sorry to keep harping on the original but I just can't help it) gave a street- smart performance. Maybe she was never Oscar-worthy but she was certainly believable. Lake always gave the impression of being a pretty girl who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and never lost her toughness (which is what she, in fact, was). This element makes her eventual friendship with the hit-man much more believable. She understands him because she probably had a rotten childhood too. Georgann Johnson's take on the character is more maternal and some of the complexity of the relationship is lost.Finally, the villain played by Jacques Aubuchon seems rather out of place as well. The original film had the delightfully squeamish Laird Cregar in this role. Aubuchon does a pale impression of Cregar but simply doesn't match him. Cregar's character was fussy, eccentric and way too fond of peppermints but he was also paranoid and it was this paranoia that endangered Veronica Lake's character. Aubuchon, on the other hand, simply follows paint-by-numbers villain motivation.So, this film is mainly for film buff and Cagney completists. From me, it won a resounding "meh" Would I have liked it better if I had never seen This Gun for Hire? Maybe a little. But not enough for me to give this film any kind of recommendation to general film enthusiasts. Stick with the original.

As B movies go, SHORT CUT TO HELL makes it pretty far. This is a tawdrier remake of Graham Greene's source novel for THIS GUN FOR HIRE with lower-rent sets, and lead actors less charismatic, but still very effective. In fact, it's the acting that most impresses about this odd little film. Robert Ivers embodies the diminutive, tightly wound hit-man pretty convincingly; his body language and hard-edged line deliveries are spot-on. Opposite him is Georgann Johnson, who has a disarming, natural acting style. The oil and water combination of these two sustains an interesting tension for the whole movie. Their first meeting aboard a train is a case in point: a very effectively played scene. Talented Johnson never made much of a mark until television later in the 50s and 60s. In the role of Bahrwell, Jacques Aubuchon is very well cast, as are Murvyn Vye and assorted other smaller roles, including Yvette Vickers and Douglas Spencer. Scarce prints of SHORT CUT TO HELL don't always include director James Cagney's spoken introduction and sometimes a jump cut suggests editorial trimming. A restored version of this film would do justice to Cagney's gift for directing actors and a couple of fine action sequences.