Gangs Inc. (1941)

You won't be disappointed!

I wanted to but couldn't!

i must have seen a different film!!

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

****SPOILERS**** Cheaply made and photographed with many of the night action scenes in it so lacking of any kind of decent lighting that their almost unwatchable the film "Paper Bullets" or its DVD released title "Crime,Inc" has the distinction of having Alan Ladd in it in one of his first more then just bit part roles. Ladd plays Jimmy Kelly an undercover NY cop impersonating mob kingpin Bill Dugan. That fact that Dugan is behind bars in NY's Tombs Detention Center doesn't seem to alert his gang whom Jimmy Kelly has infiltrated. That's until he comes out of hiding or police protection and testifies against his startled partners in crime in open court at the very end of the film. But it's Joan Woodbury as convicted hit & run driver Rita Adams who takes center stage here as the person who took the rap for the crime that her drunken boyfriend Harold DeWitt, Philip Trent, committed.Having her gangster dad Jim Adams, Kenneth Harlam, who's a stool pigeon for the police gunned down, Mafia style, right in front of her eyes when she was 12 Rita was brought up in an orphanage and when she reached adulthood had trouble getting a job because of her dad's criminal record. Making ends meet by robbing unsuspecting men while hitchhiking and occasionally knocking off banks and check cashing joints Rita decided to go straight by getting a job at a local night club, doing all kinds off odd jobs there, and hooking up with Harold DeWitt who's pop Clarence, Gorge Pembroke, is one of the most prominent lawyers in town.Told by her lawyer Bruce King, Dayant Washburn, that if she pleads guilty to Harol's hit & run his pop Clarence DeWitt will do all he can to get her off the hook. As it turned out she in fact has the book thrown at her and given a one to five year sentence in woman's prison instead. Now with nothing to lose after getting out of prison Rita makes it a point to shake down Clarence DeWitt for big bucks in blackmailing him in her revealing that his son Harold, who had since been killed in a car accident, was the person whom she took the rap for.****SPOILERS**** It's never quite brought out in the movie just how Rita got herself involved with the Dugan Mob that Clarence DeWitt was secretly a member of. It may well have been her involvement with DeWitt that sucked her into becoming a member of the Dugan Mob without her actually knowing about it. Despite getting again convicted along with her fellow mob members, including Clarence DeWitt, on 11 felony counts including racketeering jury and wiriness tampering as well as murder Rita did end up getting her wish come true. That's by having a park built her honor for young kids to spend their free time playing stick & hand ball among other games and not get themselves involved in the world of crime. And thus have them develop a healthy attitude towards life which Rita never did or had a chance to have. As for Alan Ladd he went on to bigger and better things or movie roles that established him as one of the top Hollywood actors in both the 1940's & 1950's.

This obviously was a pretty low budget production, but the cast was pretty decent, the basic premise had promise, and something more could have been done with it, but the script wasn't that great- the plot is incoherent and seems almost random at times and the dialog is stilted and terrible.Basically, a girl's father gets whacked by fellow gangsters, and later she becomes a robber, and wants to avenge his death, and then it goes into a mob protection racket involving corrupt politicians.Alan Ladd gets top billing but he really plays a very minor role.I have to say I found it mildly entertaining in its archaic B-grade hokiness but it really is shoddy and pathetic.

My question is what was the worst element of this movie? Was it the acting? directing? script?. Maybe it was the waste of Alan Ladd and Jack LaRue. LaRue and, especially, Ladd are capable of bringing extreme sinisterness to a role. In this movie, it was hard to tell who the bad guy was. Granted, Ladd was playing an undercover good guy, but even in his good guy roles, he could be very chilling. So, the net result was a potentially good movie bereft of any feeling of conflict.

Flipping through the channels I was lucky enough to stumble upon the beginning of this movie. I must admit that it grabbed my attention almost immediately. I love older films and this is or should be considered a classic! One of the most wonderful rarities of this movie is that the main character was not only female but she was also a bad girl. I highly recommend this movie!