"The Racket"

Tonight's movie was a very well done Noir that I was suprised I hadn't heard of, "The Racket" (1951),
starring Robert Ryan and Robert Mitchum. That's about as macho a co-starring duo as you could hope for and they play their roles to the hilt. Rarely did Bob Mitchum ever play a good guy, but this time he is the straight-arrow captain of a New York police precinct. He is new to the precinct because he has been forced out of another one where he was also captain. But he would not take bribes or look the other way at Mob corruption in the department, so he was transferred. Now he is running the new station, and he tells his officers that things are gonna be different. He has just come from a corrupt station and he is not going to let it happen again. He expects his officers to uphold their sworn duties.

But then along comes Robert Ryan, in tall, thin but physically fit psycho mode. Unlike Mitchum (who it is important to remember had a deodorant named after him), Ryan very often played a good guy - a detective, a military officer, a husband. He was a versatile actor who was usually intense and taciturn but who gave a good performance no matter the role. He did excel at tough guys, though, and he could play an unhinged criminal quite convincingly.

In "The Racket", Ryan plays a big fish in a small pond local Mobster, who is so unpredictable in his violent impulses that nobody wants to cross him. His lackeys won't even report bad news, for fear he will explode. He is the man responsible for corrupting Mitchum's former precinct. Ryan had everybody on the take, from officers to the brass, all the way up to a heavyweight prosecutor who is looking to become a judge. They all look to Robert Ryan for the okay signal before any of them do anything, because, in his words, he "is the City". And now he is moving his operation into Robert Mitchum's new police district, the one Mitchum is determined to keep clean.

On top of this is another organised crime outfit, bigger and more anonymous than Ryan's heavy handed hoodlums. This syndicate is run under the cover of a high-end real estate company, whose unknown owner has everyone in his pocket, including the New York State Crime Investigator assigned to build a case against Ryan.

It's all very convoluted and downright Trumpian. Collusions and obstructions galore, in New York no less, and with Mitchum in the Mueller seat, the incorruptible champion of justice.

There are other characters of note, particularly smoky voiced Lizabeth Scott as a nightclub chanteuse reluctantly engaged to Robert Ryan's dimwitted brother, and William Talman, who plays an honest altruistic cop devoted to Captain Mitchum's policy of keeping the Mob out of their sector. Talman, it should be noted, could also play a complete whack job, as he demonstrated in the classic B-Noir "The Hitch Hiker".

I often rattle on about the development of motion picture scripts and how the craft of screenwriters reached a zenith in the 40s and 50s. Noirs are formula pictures by nature - about solving a crime - and so you know you are gonna get some variation of that framework in every movie of this sort, but still, I was impressed with how well the many threads of interplay were woven together in making "The Racket". First you are looking at one character's subterfuge, which leads to a response from the police, which leads to more coverup from the mobsters, which leads to a fringe character's action that throws tightens the noose around the criminals, and all of the sneaky political crooks on the fringe, who are exposed as the case against Ryan's mob builds.

The script and the direction must have been a prototype for other filmmakers in the Noir genre, and even for the big budget, more technical crime movies that were to come in the 1960s and 70s.

"The Racket" was a blueprint for how to make a crime film, with plot detail and character development.

It gets my highest recommendation for a Noir, and is thus classified as a Five Star Must See for fans of the genre, or anyone else.

It's the perfect Noir for this day and age and what we are living through at present, with our Organised Crime Presidency and their attempted takeover of the United States Of America.

See it especially for the performances of the Dueling Roberts, Mitchum and Ryan.

That's all the news for today. See you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)