Boring

A lot of fun.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Just a personal preference of mine, but I would like to have seen the roles of Robert Mitchum and Robert Ryan reversed in the story. I think Mitchum makes for a much better bad guy, but when all is said and done, they each pulled off their roles pretty successfully.You know what was kind of interesting? For all the talk of the 'old man' behind the scenes of the national crime syndicate, he never appeared on screen. He was often referred to by that moniker or simply as the 'chief', and his guy Connolly (Don Porter) even entered his office once at the Acme Real Estate Company, but the guy remained a mystery throughout. Sounds like a maguffin to me.As an incorruptible cop, Captain McQuigg (Mitchum) makes it personal with Nick Scanlon (Ryan), the one time city crime boss who finds himself subservient to the dictates and operating style of the old man. You know, I couldn't quite figure out how the old man kept his lieutenants under his thumb without resorting to the violence rout. Sure he had a lot of politicians and cops in his pocket, but every once in a while it would seem some muscle would be required. Still, you can't be a hothead like Scanlon was, or you wind up like Sonny Corleone.The story had me slightly confused at one point, when McQuigg got back to the Seventh Precinct Station right after the hood he was tailing fell off the roof, a desk officer tells him that District Attorney Rogers is waiting for him in his office. By that time, we had already seen the billboard touting D.A. Mortimer Welsh (Ray Collins) for district judge. Then, Nick Scanlon kept the confusion going by continually referencing Welsh as 'Judge', probably figuring it was a foregone conclusion. Or maybe it was just Scanlon's style to choose his words inaccurately, he kept calling Irene Hayes (Lizabeth Scott) a 'tommy', but nobody seemed to react to it. Oh well.The story ends with most of the bad guys getting their due. One knows that taking down Scanlon had to be part of the resolution here, but it was more than fitting that D.A. Welsh and his crony Turk (William Conrad) would be served subpoenas for all the graft and corruption they were involved in. The picture closes with Captain McQuigg's doleful lament about the slow, constant struggle to keep the gears of justice sand free. It's too bad Johnson (William Talman) didn't make it to the end of the picture, I was really looking forward to his explanation on how two dead mugs wound up in his living room.

The Racket (1951)A stellar cast and gritty photography can't quite lift this movie into the exciting classic it might have been. The basic problem here is the material, the story, which is slow and steady. It involves lots of conversations, all filmed with huge drama, about negotiating new ways of doing things as a national mob organization squeezes out the local mob boss.This is still a good movie, for sure. Robert Ryan plays the local boss getting overshadowed and he ramps it up as usual, beating a few people senseless. Robert Mitchum is given a dull role, not as a cop on the beat but as the chief of a precinct in charge of cops on the beat. And he was once buddies with Ryan, so they have a couple of one-on-ones. Lizabeth Scott is sharp and as good as she gets in her quirky femme fatale manner, but we don't see enough of her. Throw in Ray Collins as a slithering politico (a role he seems to have been born for) and William Conrad as a corrupt cop (with many pounds to gain before his days as t.v.'s Cannon, etc.) and you see how it looks like good stuff.A star behind the scenes is definitely cinematographer George E. Diskant, not a big name in the field but responsible for several terrific film noirs including the flawless "They Live by Night." He is in good form here even though there isn't much action. You only wish the director, John Cromwell, had more guts to let Diskant fly with things. Cromwell is one of those by-the-book directors who gets the job done but doesn't seem to see the opportunities to surprise the viewer. And he was loaded with opportunity here.The story is basically about life as a cop in a big city. That's why half the time (almost literally) we are in the police station. Or a squad car. There is no actual crime at the center of things (lots of crimes go zipping by, for sure). It's not about solving a crime, but about getting the old boss. It's Mitchum vs. Ryan. And Ryan is more fun. Things get fairly complicated, perhaps needlessly, but the overall trend is toward justice, and how it is best served in a corrupt world. Filled with good nuances, but packaged a bit awkwardly by the end.I say this isn't quite a film noir, but of course in the big picture most people would have to call it that. What it lacks (for me) is the loneliness of the lead character, and maybe even the evilness of the femme fatale. Mitchum is part of a big machine, and a sympathetic one (a huge police force). Ryan is just a thug, and a mean one with a small mind. It's pure crime stuff with noir stylizing. Good enough for a great evening--if you stay alert to all the details.

During the 1940's and 50's it was easy to watch a crime/drama and with little effort, would be able to identify the good guys from the bad guys. This particular story called " The Racket " is based on the play written by Bartlett Cormack and was directed by John Cromwell. In it we have Robert Mitchum starring as Captain Thomas McQuigg, a no-nonsense, hard-bitten cop of the Old School who has decided to run a clean precinct. He does this by going after Nick Scanlon (Robert Ryan, who is at his best) as the most notorious mobster around. Scandlon believes his methods are fool proof and so effective he does not need to adapt. After all, he is backed up by 'The Big Boss', a corrupt District Atty. Mort X Welsh and an equally corrupt Det. Sgt. Turk (William Conrad.) The movie is standard Black and White 1950's drama with sufficient excitement to keep the characters alive and interesting. The audience is entertained and throughout the length of the story kept alert enough to learn the outcome. Excellent film fare. ****

Any movie with principals like Robert Ryan, Robert Mitchum, and Lizabeth Scott certainly sounds "noir", especially with support like William Conrad and William Talman. But this isn't. It's more of a "detective story." That may be just as well because I understand that some people have difficulty pronouncing the word "noir." Briefly, Mitchum is the new Chief of Police brought into District Seven to clean up some of the corruption, which, as it turns out, leads all the way up through the judicial system. Mitchum is the straight arrow. He wears a suit and tie and has a domestic life, as hard as that is to believe.The proximate bad guy is Ryan as Nick Scanlon. He runs all the local rackets in this unidentified city with the connivance of the politicians. He's Ryan-as-bad-guy through and through. He never asks for quarter nor does he give any.This puts him on the spot because The Syndicate is moving into more sophisticated territory, with front organizations like The Acme Real Estate Company, money laundering, and probably structured derivative instruments. Ryan knows nothing about this stuff. He's an old-fashioned kind of gangster. Somebody gets in his way, he spanks him.The plot gets kind of complicated. Talman is a good cop who arrests Ryan's brother for carrying a concealed weapon. That puts him in bad with Ryan and he pays the price. Lizabeth Scott and Robert Hutton are folded into the story with nothing much to do.Most of the scenes are static shots of people standing around and talking. There are some brief action scenes too -- the obligatory car chase through the city streets, the explosion of a bomb on Mitchum's porch, two shootings. Well -- three, I guess, but the third takes place off screen and is pretty well handled.Some of the action scenes are less than well done. Mitchum and a horde of cops have a couple of hoods cornered in the garage of an office building. Mitchum pursues one of them up the stairs to the roof, where they have an ill-staged brawl. And what do the rest of the police do? Instead of rushing to his aid, they stand on the street below, with their arms folded across their chests, and watch the fist fight with considerable interest.Mitchum, when he got a good part, could really rise to the occasion, as he did in "Night of the Hunter," "Cape Fear," "The Sundowners", and "Farewell, My Lovely." This part must not have engaged him because he walks through it without any expression except an occasional smirk.The steely-eyed Ryan, on the other hand, is a cauldron of emotion. He has a terrific scene in which he tells Mitchum of the trouble his younger brother has caused him. Something like, "I paid his way through four colleges. FOUR! I even had to buy a chair at one of them. Well, not a chair. They call it an endowment." (Ryan kicks a chair.) The poor guy is beset by problems -- what with his brother determined to marry that night club canary, Scott, and the pressure from The Old Man above to lay off the rough stuff. Sometimes a man can't win for losing.