Rent The Racket (1951)

Classic b/w crime pulp - The Racket review by TE

Very fine, taut mobster thriller. No flab, just hard-nosed policing (Mitchum) and hard-nosed gangstering (Ryan) with an excellent supporting cast.

Besides the usual tropes, the film has a strong political commentary within the storyline.

The way it brings in city politics and the local media prefigures much later series like The Wire.

Gangster Noir. - The Racket review by Steve

This is a close remake of a 1928 gangster film, but updated from prohibition to the less febrile syndicates of the postwar period. Robert Ryan is stuck in the past when deals were ratified with a machine gun. His partners want him to modernise. Robert Mitchum is the impassive, laconic police chief who intends to bring him down, by whatever means necessary.

And that includes operating outside the law. Some of his precinct stick their neck out an awful long way, but others are in the pay of the mob. This could have ended up a typically chaotic Howard Hughes production- six directors were employed!- but it's actually a rousing, brutal crime film, with car chases, explosions and gunfights which are above par for the period.

Despite its origins going back into the silents, it's not dated and is among the best of the second wave of gangster pictures which ran through the '50s. It's not as good as The Big Heat (1953) but it is that sort of film, with the impression that crime is now a semi-legitimate business enterprise which has corrupted law and order and politics. So a long way from Little Caesar.

The two stars are well matched and William Talman a standout as a reckless ex-Marine who will pay any price to eliminate the mob. Though Lizabeth Scott is wasted in a nothing role as a nightclub singer. With the Production Code still in operation there is some '30s style moralising to offset the violence. Yet its portrayal of the cops as just another gang, is way ahead of its time.