Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

"Bullets or Ballots" is a routine film with nothing being particularly outstanding. It has some good moments to be sure and I enjoy seeing Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart tussle with each other. They made five films together and they compliment each other. The plot is the usual thing about an undercover police officer who tries to smash a criminal organisation on his own. The script is pretty much what you would expect from a film like this. Robinson was soon to appear in some fine movies for "Warner Bros" where he would throw off his image as that of a gangster or tough guy. Joan Blondell makes one of her last film appearances after being quite a big star in the early 1930s.

. . . 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?

***SPOILERS*** First of five movies that Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart were together in has Robinson as tough incorruptible and straight as an arrow NYC cop Johnny Blake infiltrate the mob in order to get the goods on who's behind it and paying off the local police and politicians to keep the mob immune from the law.Getting together with his boss police Captain Dan McLaren, Joe King, Blake has himself booted from the force for no other reasons then not having his tie straightened during the annual Saint Patrick's Day Parade. This ridicules charade on both Blake and Capt.McLaren's part is farther enhanced that during a boxing match at Madison Square Garden Blake belt's the police captain in front of mobsters Al Kruger and his #1 Man Bugs Ferner, Barton MacLane and Humphrey Bogart, in order to convince them that his firing by Capt.McLaren was in fact on the up and up.Impressed by Blake's actions which Capt. McLaren refused to press charges against him Kruger offers him the #2 spot, after Bugs Ferner,in him crime organization. Unknown to Kruger but not the smart and quick on his feet,in smelling a rat, Ferner Blake is planning to not only set him up but his bosses, a bunch of big Wall Street type, for the fall. That's in having the police headed by Capt. McLaren catching them red handed with the good's or money from their criminal enterprises like loan sharking bookie and the numbers rackets.Ferner who never trusted Blake and with good reason soon gets a bit ticked off with his boss Kruger in him being so naive and stupid in letting Blake in on his mob operations and offs, guns down, Kruger making it look like a rival mob boss did it. Blake who was promoted by Kruger as his #1 Man in now becoming the Main Man, after Kruger's murder, finally gets to see who's big or #1 boss or bosses, the Wall Street movers and shakers, and plans to set them up! That's before Ferner gets wind of what he's planning for them as well as himself! It's now a race against time in Blake getting his bosses to take the weekly numbers profits that he promised them before a mad as hell, in being double-crossed by Blake, Ferner gets to him first!***SPOILERS*** The what seemed like smart cookie Blake turns out to be as silly and self-destructive as his former and dead boss Kruger by for reasons known only to himself, and the movie script writers, has Ferner track him down at his secret hideout in downtown Manhattan to end up getting shot, as well as shooting Ferner in return, by him. With his girlfriend numbers racket gun moll Lee Morgan, Joan Blondell, giving him a lift in her car to Wall Street Blake brings back the bacon,illegal numbers money, to his bosses only to have them busted and thrown behind bars by Capt. McLane & his boys as soon as they laid their hands on it! As for Blake he'll never live to see what his heroic as well as brainless actions accomplished by dying from the wounds inflicted on him by Ferner that he, by not using his head, could have so easily avoided!

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.