The Racket (1951)

Director:

John Cromwell

Writers:

William Wister Haines (screenplay) and
W.R. Burnett (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

12 December 1951 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Film-Noir | Drama

Tagline:

YOU'LL LEARN WHO PAYS OFF WHO -- AND WHY! (original print ad - all caps)

Plot:

The big national crime syndicate has moved into town, partnering up with local crime boss Nick Scanlon...

Plot Keywords:

Police | Corruption | Election | Singer | Fall From Height

Cast

Robert Mitchum	...	Captain Thomas McQuigg
Lizabeth Scott	...	Irene Hayes
Robert Ryan	...	Nick Scanlon
William Talman	...	Officer Bob Johnson
Ray Collins	...	Dist. Atty. Mortimer X. Welsh
Joyce Mackenzie	...	Mary McQuigg (as Joyce MacKenzie)
Robert Hutton	...	Dave Ames ('City Press' cub reporter)
Virginia Huston	...	Lucy Johnson
William Conrad	...	Det. Sgt. Turk
Walter Sande	...	Precinct Sgt. Jim Delaney
Les Tremayne	...	Harry Craig (Crime Commission chief investigator)
Don Porter	...	R.G. Connolly (ward boss)
Walter Baldwin	...	Booking Sgt. Sullivan
Brett King	...	Joe Scanlon
Richard Karlan	...	Breeze Enright (round-faced Scanlon henchman)

Runtime:

88 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

USA:Approved (PCA #15253) | Finland:K-16 | Spain:13 | West Germany:16 | Sweden:15

Company:

RKO Radio Pictures

Trivia:

In May 1950, Samuel Fuller was assigned to work on the film's screenplay and was considered as a possible director.

Goofs:

Continuity: Nick Scanlon's car is a 1949 Chrysler Crown Imperial limo. In the crash scene, an older 1942 model was used. The '49 side trim has been added, but the different front end reveals the switch.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in The Big Steal: Look Behind You (2007) (V)

Soundtrack:

A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening

A slow starter, but a fine crime drama

I'd never been able to get past the first couple of reels of The Racket on TV and it certainly looked like being the make-weight of Warner's new Film Noir collection, but once you get past the lunking Howard Hughes-imposed Nicholas Ray-directed prologue turns into a surprisingly engaging and gripping crime drama. Structurally it's certainly unusual, probably as a result of Hughes' typical interference - it's more than 17 minutes before Mitchum makes his entrance, and there are some sporadically awkward crosscuts to inserts shot by Ray and others after John Cromwell (who starred in the play the film was based on in the 1920s) had left.

Robert Ryan is surprisingly not quite there on screen for once: not exactly bad, but somewhere between phoning it in and, in his early scenes at least, possibly drunk on set - his timing is slightly askew, his usual excellent instincts abandoned along with his sense of proportion in moments that are just a little over the top. But there's so much to admire that even the unlikely escalation of the feud between the two protagonists is carried along. There's a fine shootout in a garage, a neat car chase that sees the cops plow through a billboard for a mob-backed political candidate and a terrific death scene at the end. The supporting cast are intriguing too, with William Conrad's cop and Ray Collin's DA both corrupt but not so entirely that they're lost causes: they exist in a gray area that throws the leads into sharper relief.

Eddie Mueller's audio commentary is the only extra on Warners' R1 DVD, but it's quite excellent and well worth listening to.