"This Gun For Hire” is a very noir film noir. What do I mean by that? Several things. One is that there are layers and layers of dark shadow in almost every shot, a style typical of noir movies whose directors knew they were making noir- unlike, for instance, “The Maltese Falcon,” where the tendency toward dark shadows is more understated.

The second is that the main character, a seemingly inhuman hitman named Raven, is trapped by circumstance into a situation he cannot escape, so that even when you find out that he is not quite as soulless as he appears, it still doesn't matter. Not only can his ghostlike shred of humanity not save him, it is exactly what dooms him.

Raven carries out his ruthless trade with a mechanical, dead efficiency that still seems eerie more than sixty years later. It will remind modern viewers of the hitman character in “No Country For Old Men,” except that Raven is a sharper dresser. He wears his long black coat and film noir fedora with all the elegance one would expect. The man in the black coat, though, is like a porcelain doll, his empty eyes gazing blankly at nothing as he stalks his prey, or waits patiently in the shadows, or pulls the trigger.

It is only in occasional moments, such as the scene with the cat in the warehouse, where you realize that Raven isn't really a blank slate. He's a damned soul in need of redemption- a need that is almost never answered in the universe of film noir.