Tweet

MovieMail exclusive - a blistering Robert Ryan faces off against Robert Mitchum in this bleak, fatalistic picture of corruption. Barry Forshaw takes a backhander from an intriguing noir.

Given that the director Nicholas Ray worked uncredited on John Cromwell's film noir - and that one of the screenwriters was W R Burnett - it's hardly surprising that The Racket is one of the most intriguing entries in the genre.

All the standard trappings are handled with great skill, and the performances are persuasive (notably Robert Ryan, on blistering form as the brutal gangster unable to see that corporate crime rather than violent enforcing is the way of the future). Robert Mitchum, miscast as the single-minded, honest police chief up against a corrupt system, has the more thankless task, and must have envied Ryan his showier part, but both men play the material with their customary skill.

But what distinguishes The Racket is its bleak, fatalistic picture of corruption that reaches to the upper echelons of political power; this is, in fact, a political movie in every sense, with the machinations of city officials and the police force reflected in the similarly pragmatic actions of the criminals from the shadowy Mr Big to his smooth, loathsome facilitator.

 

Barry Forshaw on 27th September 2010
View all 513 of Barry Forshaw's reviews