Diagonaldi
Very well executed
SteinMo
What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.
Billy Ollie
Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
Leofwine_draca
GANG BULLETS is a low rent mobster story from cheapie studio Monogram Pictures, notorious for making endless B-movies on a shoestring. This film's about the efforts of an entire city's law and justice departments to bring a notorious criminal to book. Morgan Wallace plays said criminal, 'Big Bill' Anderson, with relish and certainly dominates the film with his larger-than-life persona. I loved the sly joke when he tells the cops that his tax records are up to date so they can't bring him to book.With a running time clocking in at just over an hour, GANG BULLETS is never boring for a moment and the plot constantly twists and turns as first the cops and then the criminals get the upper hand. The usual clichés of the gangster genre are played out here, including protection rackets, stings, and shoot-outs, and they're all handled with surprising aplomb given the paucity of the budget. The film lacks any big-name actors for recognition but works anyway despite this.
MartinHafer
No matter what I think of this movie overall, I hate that the film has an awful cliché. Apparently, there's a mom in this film that is a moron--a victim and a stupid one at that. You see, at one point a family is being held captive by killers. When the young son jumps on of the thugs, the thug's gun falls to the floor---and the mother just stands there!!! The tough thug and a 12 year-old are tumbling on the floor and the gun is only inches from the hateful old broad--and she just stands there!!! I hate this cliché and hate women who behave like walking brain stems! Or, perhaps she just hates the kid and hoping the guy kills him! The film is a crime versus the District Attorney film. Big Bill Anderson is run out of one town, but in the next he decides to create his criminal empire and is so smart that the D.A. can't prosecute him. Despite some excellent efforts, the case just can't be made against the man. And, for his trouble, the local newspaper calls for his resignation. When he tries something very desperate and a little crazy, the D.A. finds that not only doesn't he have a case against Anderson but he himself might be heading to prison! Unfortunately, the film ends with a really, really bad scene--one that requires the criminals to be even dumber than the lady earlier in the film!!Overall, this is a semi-competent B-movie made by the king of Poverty Row studios, Monogram. It's all very watchable but also not all that inspired. For Monogram, it's a good film. For a decent studio (which it wasn't), it would be sub-par. Some poor writing here and there (such as the incident described at the beginning and the bomb at the end) make this one a time-passer at best and not much more.
classicsoncall
I won't say this is one of the worst movies I've ever seen, because it isn't. But boy, it sure is one of the dumbest. Though the story has a fairly good premise and an interesting hook with the 'Junius' letters, it all crumbles under third grade level writing and if it's possible, even worse performances by the lead characters. But no sense in dwelling on the low points as if they were negatives, one of the bright spots of films like this is the ability to make fun of the genuine goofy stuff presented.Like this one - how is it that when three of Big Bill's henchmen escape from the cops with the one named Al critically shot, they make their getaway one whole city block over from where they started? Huh? Besides that, radio reports carry news of the escape in real time while it's happening! Then, henchman Red admires the way Al stays one step ahead of the cops by croaking - this is truly inspired stuff!I have to admit though, the film had me fooled with the identity of 'Junius', I thought it was Assistant D.A. Carter (Robert Kent) trying to further discredit his boss Dexter Wayne (Charles Trowbridge). In the finale though, with Wayne holding the grenade about to blow when he let go, I was fully expecting Superman to bust through a wall to make the save. Instead, Carter directs his boss to throw the grenade out the window. Hey, wouldn't it have been a good idea to OPEN THE WINDOW FIRST??!!!Monogram Pictures was well known for it's shoestring cheap budgets and low production values, but this film makes the Charlie Chan series of the same era look like "L.A. Confidential". Still, as I hope I've explained, you can have a good time with this one if you're in the right frame of mind. Watch especially for henchman Armstrong's (Donald Kerr) scene when he makes his 'confession' to the police, it's a great preview for roles that would be made famous in the Nineties by Joe Pesci.
ccthemovieman-1
After watching this recently, it really dawned on me the big gap between crime stories on film of the 1930s to ones made from 1940 on. The '30s look and sound so more dated than ones just a half dozen years later. Part of that is good because the 1930s expressions are fun to hear and the films are shorter and faster-paced, and a bit edgier.The cops that appear are really different. Even though there is a lot of moralizing - which is fine with me, such as prefaces right before the feature warning of the dangers of crimes and having criminals glorified, the films themselves actually make the cops look like thugs as well as the criminals! The police are shown treating suspects as if they are already convicted felons, roughing them up, denying them a lawyer, detaining them illegally, etc. - and they are supposed to be the good guys?! I am no Liberal by a longshot but no wonder laws were put in to protect average citizens from the police, if that's the way things were. In fact, I was shocked to hear the term "police brutality" in this movie. I always thought that expression came from the 1960s, but here it is in a 1938 film. However, in an interesting twist, in this film two crooks fake "police brutality" to get out of testifying before a grand jury against their vicious gangland boss. Interesting things happen after that, and this film gets better and better as it goes on. The main crook, played by Morgan Wallace, is really fascinating in his brutal attitude. At least they still made the bad guys worse people than those 'brutal' cops.These '30 gangster movies. may be hokey, corny, extremely dated and inadvertently not favorable to the police here and there, but they don't mess around by being too talky. They get to the point and they are simply fun to watch. Note: The IMDb board here hasn't listed this as available on DVD but that's how I watched it yesterday. It's part of a 4-film DVD pack entitled "Mobster Movies."
