Rent Assassin for Hire (1951)
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- Synopsis:
- Antonio Riccardi (Sydney Tafler), a rare stamp dealer who is secretly a hired killer, pays for the violin lessons of his gifted brother Giuseppe (John Hewer). To meet the expenses of Giuseppe's concert debut he accepts a further job, but his decision to do so provides Detective Inspector Carson (Ronald Howard), who has long hoped to ensnare Tony, with an opportunity that might now enable him to bring about his downfall...
- Actors:
- Sydney Tafler, Ronald Howard, Katharine Blake, John Hewer, June Rodney, Gerald Case, Ian Wallace, Reginald Dyson, Martin Benson, Sam Kydd, Ewen Solon
- Directors:
- Michael McCarthy
- Producers:
- Julian Wintle
- Writers:
- Rex Rienits
- Studio:
- Network
- Genres:
- Classics, Drama, Thrillers
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Reviews (1) of Assassin for Hire
Caff Society - Assassin for Hire review by CH
Suspense can be hampered by relentless action. Assassin for Hire (1951) does not slip into that trap. True to its Soho setting, where a night-time murder sets events in train, there are many scenes in one caff or another set against an almost-Oedipal scenario in which a purported stamp-dealer (Sydney Tafler) in fact earns his money as a killer - not of his mother, but in order to fulfil her dying hopes that her other son would gain recognition as a violinist.
To stage a concert (in the Rigmore Hall!) costs several hundred smackers - and, well, there are ways and means of raising the necessary. Trouble is, the Yard has its eyes on Tafler, in particular there are those bright, hunch-backing organs which animate the pipe-smoking face of Ronald Howard (who became a good Sherlock Holmes later in the decade).
One would like to know more about its director, Michael McCarthy, who died a few years later at just forty. Any writer would have relished his bringing a script to the screen with the aplomb on display throughout these sixty-five minutes' glimpses of post-war London.
A moment to treasure is when a caff owner offers a choice of coffee: “Keynan or Mocca?” “What's the difference?” “There isn't one.” The baristas in modern-day Soho would provide a soliloquy.