A Bullet for Joey

I've always mentioned how seeing a movie with an interesting synopsis is something that will generally get me to watch it, especially if it has classic Hollywood stars in it. I think I may have vaguely heard of A Bullet for Joey when I saw it show up on one of the streaming services recently, so I decided to sit down and watch it considering the cast and the plot.

The movie opens up in Montreal, where an organ grinder is plying the streets. Of course, this isn't a real organ grinder, but a man hired to spy on a certain person and get that man's daily routine down. Unfortunately for him, an officer of the RCMP figures out that something isn't quite right and questions the guy, who shoots the officer in the process. That brings in RCMP detective Raoul Leduc (Edward G. Robinson).

Meanwhile, in a development that we know is related only because this is a movie and we wouldn't have such unrelated stuff otherwise, the action briefly shifts to Lisbon, Portugal. There we find Joe Victor (George Raft), an immigrant to America who was deported because of his criminal activities. He'd like to get back to America, and this combined with those criminal activities, make him an ideal tool to be used by someone else....

That someone is Eric Hartman (Peter van Eyck). Hartman is a Communist, and this being the era of the Cold War, he's got some people in the West that he has a decided interest in. One of those is Carl Macklin (George Dolenz), a Canadian researcher into nuclear physics and advanced weapons systems. It's obvious why the Communists would have an interest in Macklin, and they'd like to kidnap him so that they can learn his secrets, or at least the scientific secrets. It's not as if Macklin has an exciting personal life.

Joe is hired to come up with the plan to kidnap Macklin, and that requires figuring out his personal routine as that organ-grinder was doing. Macklin just isn't very exciting, but Joe thinks any man will be excited when presented with a honey pot. Joe has just the woman for it, too, in the form of Joyce Geary (Audrey Totter). Joyce is Joe's on-again, off-again girlfriend, and she's not all that thrilled with the job she's being asked to do. Meanwhile, another associate of Joe's pulls the short-straw duty of trying to romance Macklin's homely spinster secretary. Said secretary lives with her older sister, who rather cruelly suspects something is going on because, really, who would want to date this woman?

Meanwhile, Leduc has been tracking down every organ-grinder in town, and all of them have good alibis. But other murders start happening, and they all seem to be linked to Macklin in some way, which eventually brings Leduc closer to the Joe Victor mob, although Leduc still doesn't get just who Joe is working for. It all leads up to a climax on a cargo ship going down the St. Lawrence River....

A Bullet for Joey is one of those movies that's serviceable, but nothing great. It feels like the sort of thing that was written with the express purpose of keeping a couple of older actors working, with the plot not always coming together. Additionally, it feels like another movie that's suffering from budget problems. It was produced independently, and that might have something to do with it. (The movie was not filmed in Canada; just establishing shots were.) Ultimately, A Bullet for Joey isn't a bad movie, but it's certainly not a great or memorable film either.