(Some Spoilers) Somewhat better then you would have expected Mike Hammer flick with Robert Bray in the leading role as the tough as nails private eye who gets involved in a slew of murders as well as a hunt for the missing one million dollars Venacci Jewel collection. All this because he took the time and effort to help a young girl named Red, Jan Chaney, from Nebraska get herself straightened out and go, with Mike handing her a twenty, back home to mama and the boy she left behind.
It's when Red is found dead, in a suspicious hit and run accident, with his name and address on her that Hammer goes into action in finding who's responsible for Red's untimely death; that he rightfully feels was a murder not an accident. It's when Hammer finds that this usual ring, with a V craved on it, that Red had on her was missing that he had his girl Friday, or secretary, Velda, Pamela Duncan, check it out for him.
Finding out, from an 10 year old Time Magazine cover, the ring belonged to the long lost Venacci jewelry collection it became obvious that was the reason for Red's murder. Hammer traces down two persons who can help him break the case of the murdered redhead who happened to work with her at the nightclub the "Blue Bell". As expected the two persons whom Hammer got in contact with dancer Maria Garcia, Genie Coree, and the deft mute janitor Jane, Terrance De Morney, ended up being murdered before they can help Hammer in finding Red's killer or killers.
The one clue that Hammer, with the help of his secretary Velda, came up with was what would lead him to find why and who was behind not only Red's but Jane and Marie's murders as well. It had to do with a rented apartment that was occupied by Col. Holloway, Donald Randolph, just after he was discharged from the military after the end of WWII. It was Col.Holloway, a US intelligence officer, who in fact stole the valuable Venacci Jewelry collection while he was serving with the US Army in Germany back in 1945! Having spent ten years behind bars Holloway was soon to be released from jail and it was certain to Hammer, with the jewels never being found, that the Venacci Jewels were somewhere hidden in that apartment that Holloway rented. What Hammer didn't know at the time is that not only Holloway was interested in finding the long lost, or hidden, Venacci Jewels but a gang of murderous jewels thieves lead by Frenchman LaRoche, Peter Mamakos, were also looking for them!
A bit below average, compared to the previous Mike Hammer movie "Kiss Me Deadly", "My Gun is Quick" is rescued by actor Robert Bray's interpretation of the ruthless and unprincipled Mike Hammer portrayed by Ralph Meeker in the aforementioned film. In that Bray's Hammer, in the film "My Gun is Quick", has a heart of gold and played strictly by the rules. That besides him being as convincing, if not more so, as Meeker was in showing how brutal and ruthless Mike Hammer can be when he wanted to get information as well as slug it out with the bad guys.
This in fact took away Hammer's both bad guy and anything to get results image and made you for once like him. Instead of making him, like Ralph Meeker, the best of a bad lot compared to those he fought which Mike Hammer comes across as in almost all of the films he's portrayed in.