Short Cut to Hell

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.

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.

Peppermint-loving Jacques Aubuchon hires Robert Ivers to kill a couple of people, then pays him off with hot money. So Ivers boards the train to track down the guy who stiffed him. Seated next to Georgann Johnson, a singer who's heading to LA to work ina night club, he lifts a five-dollar bill from her. She catches it and demands her money back, then notices how hungry he is and splits a sandwich with him. Aubuchon is on the train, sees Iver, and calls the cops. Ivers forces Miss Johnson off the train with him, but they part company.... although their paths will soon cross again.

How did Jimmy Cagney come to make his sole movie as director with this remake of 1942's THIS GUN FOR HIRE? Good friend A. C. Lyles was producing it as his first picture and asked him to. It's not particularly distinguished, but then, neither was the first screen version. It's much more open in its sexuality, with a long moving shot focused on Yvette Vickers' rear as she sashays around Ivers' flop. Everyone is good, but no one is great, and lightning didn't strike the way it did with the first movie.

This is the only film James Cagney directed, and for a first-time effort, this remake of THIS GUN FOR HIRE is not too shabby. Cagney supposedly made the film as a favor to producer A.C. Lyles, and he did not really intend to pursue a career as a director. While it may not be up to the original, the film still has a good deal of Cagney-esque energy, and enough suspense to sustain viewer interest.

Actress Georgann Johnson is cast in the Veronica Lake role, and she applies a serious amount of realism. At one point, she has to walk down the aisle of a train, and she does it very subtly as if her equilibrium is off-balance, which if you think about it, it should be. How come other actors do not walk realistically on trains, planes and other fast-moving transportation in movies? Maybe they should consult Miss Johnson for pointers.

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.