A Bullet for Joey

I have always been deceived every time I have watched this Lewis Allen film, I don't know why. Despite the fact that two heavies of the American crime film genre are together. Maybe because of the mix up between gangster element and the spy - cold war- one. But it remains worth seeking and seeing only for the presence of those two. I am not sure that they worked together besides.

In Montreal, a police inspector (Edward G. Robinson) slowly discovers a plot to kidnap a nuclear physicist. American mobsters, foreign spies and a blonde seductress are all involved.

John Howard Reid considered the movie dull. He said a slow pace, one-dimensional characters, and an unconvincing climax plague the film. Sadly, I tend to think he is right. I was all invested the first ten or fifteen minutes, but found myself less interested as the movie went on.

I have a special fondness for George Raft, and an even bigger fondness for Edward G. Robinson, so you simply cannot go wrong with a film that has both men. And then adding all the film noir elements, along with spies and such, you have real potential. I just do not know if they actually reached it.

Communist agents in Canada are spying on Dr. Carl Macklin, an atomic physicist whose knowledge they want to steal. To kidnap him, Eric Hartman, the party's top man in Montreal, offers $100,000 to deported American criminal Joe Victor.

Joe's former flame Joyce Geary is blackmailed into helping with the plan. Police inspector Leduc of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigates. A thug working for Victor kills the scientist's secretary after using her to gain information. Leduc is taken prisoner aboard a ship as Hartman and Victor attempt to take Dr. Macklin with them to Europe.

Leduc pleads with Victor, who misses his native country, to do the right thing for and help stop the communists. A shootout ensues between Victor and Hartman ...

Decent crime thriller that gets a major boost by the doyens of gangster films -Edward G Robinson and George Raft - and the story is intriguing enough and there's some exciting moments, though it does drag a little and it's not too exciting at times. Raft and Robinson are a joy to watch, however- loved Raft's one liners.

Edward G. Robinson and George Raft team up for the second and last time in A Bullet for Joey, a cold war noir espionage thriller set in Montreal.

Their first teaming as a memorable one. They co-starred in Manpower 14 years earlier and had a fistfight on the set over the affections of co-star Marlene Dietrich. Dietrich was involved with Raft at the time and Raft got jealous of Robinson who was a very cultured man and could talk to Dietrich about things that Raft knew little about.

A whole lot of water went under the bridge in the interim and there was no reported friction between the co-stars. Marlene had gone out of Raft's life and she was never in Robinson's at all.

Robinson's a Canadian R.C.M.P. inspector and he gets drawn into an investigation that involves the kidnapping of an atomic scientist George Dolenz and the device he's working on. A whole lot of dead bodies start turning up around Dolenz including a suspicious Mountie that starts the ball rolling.

Raft is a deported American gangster, living in Lisbon, who is recruited by Communist spy Peter Van Eyck to pull off the kidnapping. Raft sneaks into Canada, gets some of his old gang back together and proceeds on the job.

A Bullet for Joey proceeds on a parallel plot track with Raft putting together the kidnapping and Robinson working on a multiple homicide investigation.

Both Robinson and Raft were now B picture players. Robinson would make a big comeback the following year in The Ten Commandments. There was not to be a comeback for George Raft however.

Look for another good performance by Audrey Totter as the gang moll who Raft recruits to entice Dolenz. Totter graced many a B film back in the day competing with Veda Ann Borg for brassiest moll.

A Bullet for Joey is good noir film with a cast headed by two guys who knew their way around the genre. It's a cold war relic of a film, but I think can still be enjoyed by today's audience.

This lesser and curiously-titled noir re-unites two stars (who had previously been teamed in Raoul Walsh's MANPOWER [1941]) from the gangster heyday – Edward G. Robinson and George Raft. Robinson, by now, was alternating between good-guy/authoritative roles and villainous types – so it was Raft who got saddled with the obsolete hoodlum figure (albeit a mere cog in the wheel in the plot to kidnap a nuclear scientist, with Peter van Eyck as the true ring-leader).

While I thoroughly enjoyed ILLEGAL (1955), also with Robinson and by director Allen and which actually preceded this viewing, I was less enthused with this one: tolerable in itself but not especially interesting as drama (though, again, it was concocted by two noir specialists – OUT OF THE PAST [1947]'s Geoffrey Homes, a pseudonym for Daniel Mainwaring, and A.I. Bezzerides who, soon after, would contribute the far more significant KISS ME DEADLY [1955]); still, the hard-boiled dialogue (especially as delivered by the cynical Raft) is one of the main sources of entertainment throughout the film.

For most of the duration, though, Robinson takes a back seat to the criminals' activities – whose scheme is handled in a needlessly convoluted way that involves a couple of seductions (of the scientist by Raft's moll Audrey Totter, herself a noir staple, and of his prim female assistant by one of the gangster's lackeys) and, of course, leaves a trail of murder behind it! A couple of twists late in the game see Totter really falling for the naïve scientist and Raft persuaded by Robinson into doing his patriotic duty and turning against van Eyck (atypically, the climax takes place aboard ship).

For the record, I've six more Robinson films in my "To Watch" pile – three vintage titles (the compendium TALES OF MANHATTAN [1942], the sentimental family saga OUR VINES HAVE TENDER GRAPES [1945], and the noir-ish melodrama THE RED HOUSE [1947]) and three minor outings, all of which happen to be capers, from his twilight period (OPERATION ST. PETER'S [1967] THE BIGGEST BUNDLE OF THEM ALL [1968], and IT'S YOUR MOVE [1969]).