A Bullet for Joey (1955) Reviews

• Commies, Gangsters, and Mounties

  bkoganbing2006-11-29

  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.

• An interesting Cold War gangster film that is VERY low on energy

  MartinHafer2007-01-30

  This is an odd little relic from the 1950s. While there were quite a few gangster films made at the time as well as anti-Communism thrillers (such as MY SON, JOHN and I MARRIED A COMMUNIST), this is the only film I can think of that merges the two genres! In a highly unusual move, the Communists enlist the aid of a deported American gangster (George Raft) to orchestrate the kidnapping of a nuclear scientist. This makes the film's concept rather interesting, but the film itself is hampered by low-energy performances (particularly Edward G. Robinson and Raft to a lesser extent) and poor casting (almost none of the people spoke with French-Canadian accents despite the film supposedly taking place in Montreal). In fact, Robinson sounded pretty much like he was on sedatives! Perhaps the reason for this muted performance was just because this excellent actor was so badly miscast. As a result, it is STILL watchable but also quite skip-able as well.

• Worth watching for the cast.

  Hey_Sweden2012-01-17

  "A Bullet for Joey" is pretty interesting as far as film noir goes, although it doesn't fit that neatly into the genre, being more of a straight crime drama with overtones of intrigue. Two iconic tough guys headline the drama, Edward G. Robinson as Police Inspector Leduc and George Raft as mobster Joe Victor. It takes place largely in Montreal, Canada, which only adds to the appeal of this movie for this viewer. Joe was run out of America and is now living in exile in Lisbon when dangerous men approach him with a job: kidnap a prominent nuclear physicist, Carl Macklin (George Dolenz). Joe's just happy to be working again, content not to ask too many questions, and rounds up his old gang, including Joyce Geary (the striking Audrey Totter). Trouble brews when, for one thing, Joyce, who's found some scruples, finds her task of diverting Macklin's attention compromised by the fact that she genuinely likes the guy. "A Bullet for Joey" is one of those movies that may not be destined to become a classic, but is still perfectly acceptable of its kind, telling a good, straightforward story (concocted by James Benson Nablo, and scripted by Daniel Mainwaring and A.I. Bezzerides) with efficient direction by Lewis Allen (who also directed Edward G. in "Illegal" from the same year). Fans of Edward G. should know beforehand that there are chunks of the story without him, and if one is enticed by the prospect of seeing him and Raft face off, this doesn't happen until right near the end, when Edward G. appeals to Raft's sense of not only patriotism but decency in the hopes that the mobster will see the light. They're both great, as is Totter as the tough looking but ultimately soft hearted dame who really doesn't want to see any harm come to her new man. Dolenz, Peter van Eyck as the nefarious "book dealer" Eric Hartman, William Bryant, Steven Geray, and Joseph Vitale are all good in support, with Toni Gerry extremely appealing in the role of the lovestruck secretary romanced by Bryant's scummy character as part of the plot. "A Bullet for Joey" moves along well enough and with its final theme of redemption, is 88 minutes worth of good if not great entertainment. Seven out of 10.

• All the right elemens and even two big actors can't pull this one off

  secondtake2010-10-27

  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.

• A BULLET FOR JOEY (Lewis Allen, 1955) **1/2

  Bunuel19762008-07-04

  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]).