Bullets or Ballots (1936)

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

"Bullets or Ballots" is a good 'cops and robbers' movie from Warner Bros., headquarters for gangster pictures in the 30's. It has all the gangster stars on the lot - Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, George E. Stone, Barton McLane and a score of well-known character actors. It also features Joan Blondell, everybody's sweetheart in Warner films of the time.The 'racket' here switches from protection to the numbers game, and has Robinson as a racketbuster cop going undercover to unearth McLane's bosses. Robinson is a tough cop with the underworld's respect, although it is humorous to see him intimidate guys a foot taller than he is. Anyway, he infiltrates and the story unfolds in the expected manner, but as only Warner Bros. could tell it. Not a lot different from others of its type but the flashy cast puts this one over. If you haven't seen it and you are a fan of the genre, do so.

. . . seems to be the moral of BULLETS OR BALLOTS. This movie features tons of bullets, but there's not a single ballot in sight. Humphrey Bogart as Nick "Bugs" Fenner fires many of the bullets, but not quite enough. He fancies himself to be some sort of a "Dead-Eye Dick," specializing in the single-shot assassination. Apparently, the Mob had yet to adopt their current slogan, "Three in the head makes sure they're dead" (as long as the bullets themselves are not past their "Use by" date, like the six that failed to kill one of my classmates when her husband tried to gun her down). If BULLETS had come out three years earlier, Bugs may have enjoyed a plausible and well-deserved happy ending. But most Americans know that the Pope had the final say on who lived and who died in ALL U.S. flicks released from 1934 through 1954, as I was just reminded by a National Public Radio program yesterday. So instead of the perceptive realist Bugs triumphing, it's the low-down weasel snitch cowardly two-faced toad-like "Johnny" getting the last laugh. If I'm not mistaken, the same guy who was pals with Mussolini and turning over Jews to Hitler signed the death warrant for Bugs. It's some world, Huh?

A solid, non-formulaic Warners gangster flick, "Bullets Or Ballots" showcases Edward G. Robinson in one of his most tough-nosed performances, as a cop-turned-gangster who won't be outmuscled, not even by Humphrey Bogart in one of HIS most tough-nosed roles."Finally got wise to you," Bogart's Bugs Fenner tells Robinson's Johnny Blake at one point. "You're through.""Oh no, I'm just starting," is Blake's cool reply. And he is."Bullets Or Ballots" has some problems, starting with that title. A reform-minded journalist makes a point early that "They rule by the fear of their bullets - they must be smashed by the power of your ballots." One might expect a movie where Robinson plays an honest alderman up against a crooked mayor, a la Jimmy Walker (the movie is set in New York City).It's not like that at all. Instead, the journalist is gunned down seven minutes in, and the rest of the film is set up when Blake is thrown off the force for "inefficiency". If he can't beat the mugs, he might as well join them. Rico he's not."Bullets Or Ballots" is a different kind of mob movie that way, and in other ways, too. Director William Keighley de-emphasizes gunplay in favor of sit-down confrontations. The script, by veteran Hollywood scripter Seton I. Miller and former crime reporter Martin Mooney, spends much time going over how criminal enterprises actually operate, with numbers games, pinball rackets, and money counters behind hidden walls. It even suggests a reality where the true mob masterminds are disguised as capitalist plutocrats. "The pillars of the community are the pillagers" is how Dana Polan puts it in his useful DVD commentary.Bugs is not the leader of the mob Blake winds up in; rather he's a hard-charging number-two to Barton MacLane's more civil-minded Al Kruger. The difference between Fenner and Kruger reflects a different take on gangster life, that bad guys aren't necessarily nasty men and in fact can be more dangerous and larcenous by eschewing obvious thuggery. Bogart does a great job playing against this as what Kruger calls "a strong-arm gangster" determined to prove Blake is still a cop working undercover. His scenes with both Robinson and MacLane are among the best in the movie.Robinson is the man, though, his Blake a character of total sureness and cool under pressure. Even when you think he may be less than on the level, you can't help admiring and rooting for Blake. "You don't miss much," Kruger asks him, and he doesn't.I wouldn't have missed the weak female-friendly subplot with Joan Blondell or lame comic relief bits with Frank McHugh as a character who can't remember names or add numbers. Joe King plays the new police boss who throws Blake off the force about as stiff as a pair of cement overshoes.But like Polan says, this film moves like lightning and asks some interesting questions about law enforcement in a free society. More important, it offers Robinson plenty of chances to throw his weight around. Nobody threw their weight around like him.

Edward G. Robinson stars in yet another classic gangster film from the folks who did them best at Warner Brothers. This time his character of John Blake is based on real life NYPD detective John Broderick.Back in the day you would not have given much chance for Broderick to grow old and die in bed. Yet in 1966 that's what he did do. Back in the day too many of New York's noted underworld figures felt his knuckles in various parts of the anatomy.Broderick was independent, fearless, and honest, the last being a rather rare commodity in the days of and just after Prohibition. Good thing he retired before the Miranda decision. He didn't think that hoodlums had any civil rights.Because Broderick was so open and known to all undercover work was impossible. But in Bullets or Ballots Robinson is kicked off the force for excessive brutality and joins the hoods he's been beating on.But it's all an act. It's a deal worked out by Broderick and the Police Commissioner so he can go undercover and get the goods on the numbers racket. The ostensible heads, Barton MacLane and Humphrey Bogart and the respectable types they're fronting for.Though the ending is melodramatic, Bullets or Ballots holds up pretty well today. And who knows, Broderick's real life might yet rate a good biographical picture today.