Paper Bullets

I couldn't make heads or tails out of this terrible film noir.

The plot was confusing, the acting was alright, but the picture quality was awful! Though I bought this at a "Gansters Double Pack" (8 movies on two discs) at WalMart for $5.50 and when you put the DVD in, it apologizes for the awful picture quality that some of the movies may have.

The plot was flip flopping everywhere I couldn't understand it and had no idea what was going on...then "The End" popped up and the movie was over.

What a waste of my time!

I say don't waste your money or time on this! Or if you too bought that Gansters Double Pack then just skip over this one...

2/10

On tubi streaming, it's called gangs inc but imdb has this as paper bullets. Stars jack la rue, joan woodbury. When harold kills someone while driving drunk, rita agrees to take the blame, if harold will marry her. Lamest proposal ever! When rita gets out of prison, she has gone bad, and blackmails howard's family. For a while, she's king of the hill, but how long will that last? We were deep in the film code, so she can't get away with too much for too long! The plot is a bit complicated. And this was originally an obscure film, but seems to have been re-released and retitled in 1946, as alan ladd was now a much bigger star. Sound, picture, and editing are all pretty bad, but it's doubtful this one will ever be restored. About 45 minutes in, we find out what paper bullets are. Directed by phil rosen. It's just very okay. Interesting mostly because it has alan ladd, who had uncredited roles for most of the 1930s. Sadly, alan ladd died young at age fifty.

Above all, don't try to watch it for Alan Ladd, because if you try to pick up your handkerschief, you will miss him. So, forget it. But for the rest, this is certainly not a gritty, tough and brutal gangster film in the line of William Wellman's PUBLIC ENEMY, but a gentle and smooth crime film, though not being a comedy either. It is limit light hearted, with a fantastic female lead character that you will not forget. A so ambivalent character as I love. That's the Phil Rosen's film that I remind the most, among the batch I have already seen from this B and Z movies director. Not bad, I repeat, and keep focused on this wonderful actress, whom I don't know at all.

Although Alan Ladd has a supporting role in Paper Bullets and in fact gives the film its title, the star here is Joan Woodbury who plays a girl done wrong by the worthless guy she loves and then starts taking it out on a lot of people.

In a brief prologue to the story Woodbury as a child sees her gangster father gunned down for being a stool pigeon. She then spends the rest of her childhood in an orphanage where she meets two of the men who would later play critical roles in her life.

This woman learned not a thing from her tough upbringing however. She stupidly agrees to plead guilty to a vehicular homicide that her drunk date Philip Trent committed and she goes to prison for it. That gives her a far more cynical attitude and for the rest of the film, Woodbury is giving as good as she gets as she rises in the gangland underworld.

Woodbury developed one interesting character, it's a pity that it is attached to a muddled story which drifts off on tangents. The two men in her life are aircraft designer John Bryant and gangster Jack LaRue who also were in that same orphanage. LaRue has a similarly interesting character, but he's also defeated by the script and horrible editing.

As for Alan Ladd he's the only reason this PRC B feature is remembered. He also shows something of what his tightlipped screen persona would be like when he became a star. Ladd plays an undercover cop.

As for the title Ladd tells one of his associates that the gangsters now use Paper Bullets to control a city which are votes. Now that's something today's audience can identify with.

Paper bullets refers to ballots by voters during an election. In this case, there is a "reform" movement which promises to bring even more corruption to an already corrupt political system.

Alan Ladd plays an undercover cop who does not even appear in the film for the first twenty minutes. It is really just a supporting role. The real star of the film is Joan Woodbury, an orphan who makes a lot of bad choices in life early on, and then compounds them with even more bad choices as she becomes an adult.

John Archer is her goody-goody childhood friend who eventually leads her down the right path, and Jack La Rue as Mickey Roman is another childhood friend who offers her a chance at big money, but at a moral price. Her first sleazy boyfriend is her real downfall. This is a soap that is terribly uneven; it is good sometimes, and at other times, it is terrible; see for yourself.