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.

After the FBI, the Post Office, and the NYPD, we travel north of the border to Montreal; where a police inspector (Edward G. Robinson) is suspicious about several deaths and a possible attempt to kidnap a nuclear physicist.

George Raft is the mobster doing a job for unknown masters to get money and back into the US. Audrey Totter is tapped to seduce the scientist to make the job easier.

Calling this noir is really stretching it. It doesn't have any of the dark seediness that one expects. It's more a straight police procedural.

Trotter is the most interesting character in the film. The rest just seem as if they are collecting paychecks.

A Bullet for Joey (1955)

There are some quirky oddball aspects to this film that keep it interesting--but only in spurts. First of all, there's George Raft, who is past his best days, but it's interesting all the same to see an actor with some great movies in his past. The whole strange premise of the movie, which gets a little lost in petty distractions, is about Communist spying, with a gangster (Raft) doing some gangstery things across the border--in Canada. The good guy is the inimitable Edward G. Robinson, who has a minor role despite his big billing.

What drags the movie is the basics--the story, and the direction. Lewis Allen has a couple of decent films to his credit--"Suddenly" is great, and so is "The Uninvited"--but the mundane settings and amorphous plot here are sometimes just dull. I think this is classic case of too many variables that didn't quite click, and Allen couldn't lift it up to something fabulous. As usual, the best scenes are good, but even the ending, with all its drama, doesn't quite click.

"Joey" (George Raft) arrives in Canada tasked with kidnapping a nuclear scientist on behalf of his nefarious principles. What he finds when he arrives is a rather messy state of affairs as there are already corpses mounting up and that's attracted the attention of the RCMP's finest inspector "Leduc" (Edward G. Robinson) who knows that the only thing connecting the deaths so far is the professor "Macklin" (George Dolenz). "Joey" re-assembles his old gang and that includes his ex "Joyce" (Audrey Totter) who is to try a more persuasive approach with the scientist - but one way or the other they are determined to get his secrets or himself. It's got a bit of an Cold War edge to it, this drama, and as the story develops we can see that the villain of the piece isn't fully aware of the ramifications of his task, nor of it's implications for the freedom loving nations of the world, and as the detective gets closer to tracking down who did what to whom and why, a crisis of conscience begins to trouble the unscrupulous gangster and that makes things way more perilous for just about everyone. There is not much jeopardy here and Raft is curiously underwhelming as the thrust of the plot is a little too contained by a more overt political message that rather dragged the story down. Totter also doesn't really deliver anything substantial and it takes until very near the end before it livens up enough to get Robinson out of his office and into the people smuggling racket. It's perfectly watchable but hasn't quite the bite of the usual Raft/Robinson characterisations and falls a bit flat.

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.