The Racket

A fairly decent hardboiled noir affair with strong performances from Mitchum and Ryan. The story is pretty mundane and predictable but moves along at a fairly good pace. It's the incorruptible Tom McQueeg (Mitchum) and ruthless Scanlon (Ryan) that make this movie worthwhile. So if your looking for a fairly pedestrian plot but want some snappy one liners to throw at some dirty flatfoot, look no further.

Robert Mitchum and Robert Ryan are off their game here (Mitchum's sleepy-eyed casualness isn't right for a firebrand cop while Ryan is too high-strung), but William Talman (who was so awesome in The Hitch-Hiker) picks up the slack in a supporting role that practically steals the movie. It's your usual crime picture from the period, and one need only compare it to the infinitely more thorny Fritz Lang masterpiece The Big Heat to become aware of its shortcomings.

Mitchum and Ryan are great, as always, and the movie is enjoyable, but it's a bit standard as far as noir goes, and slight. Still, you could find much worse ways to spend an hour and a half.

A well made and enjoyable crime thriller, if an ultimately unremarkable one. Robert Ryan is excellent as the vicious mob boss Scanlon, and in combination with Mitchum's screen presence the movie has some wonderful acting to boast. William Conrad is also notable as a crooked detective. Apart from that this film is pretty standard 50's crime fair, with a distinct line between good and evil.

:yawn:

Does a pretty good job of overcoming cop noir trappings, especially as it progresses and begins to take on some obsessed sheriff tropes. The pacing is quite good and while nothing in the film is particularly spectacular it's solidly entertaining and has some very compelling leads in Ryan and Mitchum. The ending is pretty emblematic of the film as a whole a little surprising and quite effective, but with its potential complexities scrubbed away.

The dialogue here is atrocious and the femme fatale sucked.

Taut crime thriller with good performances by all. Shows how far organized crime infiltrates the police, elected officials and judges.

This could’ve been an all timer if it wasn’t being torn in 17 directions by its various screen writers and directors

Decent enough noir with Robert Mitchum as the archetypal honest cop railing against a hodge-podge of gangsters and corrupt politicians. The large cast of supporting characters makes it feel a bit messy at times - Mitchum is almost overshadowed by William Talman towards the end - and the story is somewhat simplistic, but there are some good scenes (the explosion scared the hell out of me and the car chase was awesome) that make it a worth your time.

Has a lot of shortcomings, having been touched by several directors and writers. The result is confusing and overly complicated. It could be a lot more noir, but too many scenes are about secondary characters doing things that aren't that important. It's also a little too black and white, with lines clearly drawn between good guys and bad guys. But there are a few scenes that really sing, Ryan leaps off the screen, Mitchum is good despite phoning it in, and in general it's kinda fun to watch.

The potential was unlimited, but the unfocused cool of The Racket (1951) prevents it from becoming iconic. But it's still a robust crime flick where Robert Ryan shine as the ruthless villain, and Robert Mitchum slothfully gets the job done.