I'll Get You for This

Lucky Nick Cain is a 1951 film directed by Joseph M. Newman and stars George Raft and Coleen Gray.

Well-known American gambler Nick Cain visits the town of San Paola in Italy for a vacation. He receives a fabulous reception in local casino who obviously wants him to spend his money there.

Noticing his interest in a brunette, Kay Wonderly (Coleen Gray), the management offers to wipe out her gambling debt if she will pay attention to Cain and keep him at the casino.

Nick and Kay go to his hotel room for a nightcap, only to be rendered unconscious by drugged liquor. When they come to, they realize they have been framed for the murder of a man named Kennedy, a U. S. Treasury Agent.

Nick receives help from a florist named Massine (Charles Goldner), who lends him his truck and directs him to an abandoned village. He also receives help from an Italian orphan, Toni (Enzo Staiola). Check out Raft's elevator shoes when Toni offers him a shine.

Nick soon learns that counterfeit money is being laundered through the casino, and the treasury agent was there to investigate. Can he and Kay avoid the killers?

Not much of a film with an old plot. I've always liked George Raft but he phones in his performance probably for the paycheck. Coleen Gray is lovely and very natural. Sadly, the two dance the tango, but we don't really see it, just the top of their bodies!

Beautiful European scenery but alas, not in color. Cheap all around.

Gambler George Raft shows up in a casino town on the Italian Riviera, where he's welcomed by the management as a star attraction. They give him a suite, offer him police protection and a case of wine, open the baccarat table early for his pleasure. They also tell Coleen Gray they will forgive her debt if she simply keeps him interested enough to stay in town. That evening, Raft opens a bottle of the complimentary wine, pours a couple of glasses...and realizes too late it's doped. When they wake, the staff and police want to know about the dead body in the room. They escape and try to figure out what's going on.

It's based on a novel by James Hadley Chase, and I hope the novel was good. This is an incredibly clumsy movie as directed by Joseph M. Newman. At one point, Raft and Miss Gray dance a tango.... and the entire dance is shot in close-up, showing only their heads and shoulders. the entire movie is directed in that way, the easiest camera set-ups, so cheaply shot that it's clear this is another paycheck movie for Raft. The real villains, despite the obvious care and intelligence of their operations are so overt and clumsy, it's astonishing, and there's a cute kid dragged in to make sure we know that Raft is a good guy.

There are three draw cards to this movie: Coleen Gray is one. She's so relaxed and natural, while ageing George Raft is stiff and dull. Two: the Riviera/Italian locations are easy on the eye. Three: it's good to see Enzo Staiola (from The Bicycle Thieves) in a supporting role as a shoeshine boy. Otherwise it's another lacklustre melo/thriller, with no-one really trying hard enough to breath life or thrills into it. There's even a sequence where Mr Raft is given a chance to perform the tango (for which he had been famous a couple of decades previously), but none of the camera angles give a look at his moves; we have to imagine how graceful he is (or was) from the inadequate mid-shots. It seems George was a bit past it. British movies would often attempt a boost to international sales by importing an old Hollywood star. Usually it didn't work. The young Hollywood star works for me, and the even younger Italian neo-realist star, but George is walking through this one.

Gambler George Raft on a leisurely holiday on the Italian Riviera arrives at a hotel/casino where the management is really pulling out all the hospitality stops for him. The casino manager Martin Benson has even forgiven the losses of fellow American tourist Coleen Gray at the gaming tables if she'll just be friendly to Raft.

Gray's friendly enough all right, but when a Mickey Finn is slipped in both their drinks, Raft and Gray wake up to find themselves wanted for the murder of a third American at the resort.

That particular American Donald Stewart as it turns out was a secret service agent on the trail of some gangsters who have grabbed some nearly perfect counterfeit plates developed by the Nazis and never put in use during the war to destroy the value of American currency.

I'll Get You For This also entitled Lucky Nick Cain is concerned with just how Raft and Gray get out of this jackpot. The only one they can trust for a while until they sort out the good guys from the bad guys is shoeshine boy Enzo Staiola who was prominently featured in Vittorio DeSica's The Bicycle Thief a few years earlier. By the way when you see Staiola meet Raft at the beginning of the film and offer him a shine, Raft's elevator shoes are plainly visible.

The film is a British production with American stars and an Italian setting and a cast of all three countries. Maybe color would have helped as it always does in Mediterranean settings, but the film never really takes off in the action department. Raft was clearly in the B film phase of his career and this one didn't help him get out of it.

James Hadley Chase,among other writers, was well renowned for his ability to capture the readers attention from the beginning to end in all of his crime-thriller novels. That is where the difficulty sets in, can the director and crew capture the same in the movie? The story starts off with the arrival of an American gambler (Nick-George Raft) at a Mediterranean town of San Paola. Soon he gets acquainted with Kay (Coleen Gray) and finds himself framed for a murder, forcing him to go on the run with her. So far so good yet this is the turning point of the movie. Instead of going the edge of your seat 'why and who?' it turned into mediocrity. Overall, had the potential to be a great movie and could have rivaled movies like The Fugitive (1993) had a bit more suspense/tension been pumped into the screenplay and other movie making aspects.