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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mitchum as Racket Buster,
By
This review is from: The Racket (Colorized) [VHS] (VHS Tape)
Robert Mitchum had the sad-eyed look of a man who was perpetually in trouble. It gave him a boost in film noir roles, as evidenced by his excellent performance opposite femme fatale Jane Greer in the unforgettable 1947 RKO classic directed by Jacques Tourneur, "Out of the Past."In "The Racket" Mitchum plays the part of an incorruptible police captain determined to terminate mob activity in a major city by bringing an end to the strong arm tactics of sociopath enforcer Robert Ryan, who is so ruthless that the unnamed and secretive head of the operation, known only as "The Old Man," is unable to end his aggressive activity. Ryan tries unsuccessfully to bribe Mitchum aboard. The Mitchum-Ryan clash in the 1951 crime noir classic is reminiscent of another RKO gem from four years earlier pitting them against each other, "Crossfire." Mitchum played an Army sergeant who helped Washington DC police captain Robert Young apprehend crazed anti-Semitic killer Ryan. It was the film that put RKO on the map as the noir gem directed by Edward Dmytryk garnered the first Oscar nominations in the history of the Melrose Avenue studio. Adding the glamour touch to "The Racket" is blonde beauty Lizabeth Scott, on loanout from Paramount. Two years earlier Scott on the advice of Paramount boss Hal Wallis pulled out of "The Big Steal," an excellent caper film starring Mitchum, because of Mitchum's controversial arrest on a marijuana charge. Fearing adverse publicity that never resulted, Scott left the project and Jane Greer replaced her. Scott is cast as a nightclub singer who becomes engaged to Ryan's brother. Ryan controls his younger brother's every move, thinks Scott is socially beneath him, and refers to her contemptuously as "this canary." Scott supplies the character arc for the film by starting out as someone who looks after herself and professes boredom and disinterest on the issue of helping forge a better society. Eventually she assists Mitchum and the anti-racketeering commission seeking to bring down Ryan and the mob. Ray Collins, a product of Orson Welles's Mercury Theater who would later in the fifties play the police lieutenant in the popular "Perry Mason" television series, plays a shady lawyer who appears shaken by the fact that he has allowed himself to become a mob rubber stamp that the organization is running for judge to gain what they feel will be total control in the city. Playing a courageous young police officer that idolizes Mitchum and his ideals is William Tallman, who played the district attorney opposite Raymond Burr's Perry Mason character in the series of the same name. His sweetly supportive wife is Virginia Huston, who was the good girl in the triangle with femme fatale Jane Greer opposite Mitchum in "Out of the Past." William Conrad, who would later become successful playing a private detective in the seventies television series "Cannon," plays a key character role as a man who seesaws back and forth as an observer of mob and police activity. As an ultimate police mole he is involved in the climactic showdown when Ryan's fate is revealed. "The Racket" had the benefit of good timing. It was adapted from a play by Bartlett McCormack that had been last filmed in 1928. Howard Hughes, who had just taken over at RKO, took the play out of mothballs to coincide with the highly publicized national Kefauver Committee investigation into organized crime. One year earlier Edmond O'Brien had received great notices in another anti-crime expose, "711 Ocean Drive." "The Racket" was adapted to the screen by W.R. Burnett, who had written three novels that later became film suspense classics, "Little Caesar", "High Sierra" and "Asphalt Jungle." Burnett teamed up on the screenplay with William Wister Haines. While John Cromwell, who had directed Liz Scott and Humphrey Bogart in "Dead Reckoning," received the only screen credit, the film was partially directed by Nicholas Ray, which certainly explains the film's brooding darkness, enhancing its thematic reality. Ray directed the noir classics "They Live by Night" and "In a Lonely Place" prior to becoming associated with "The Racket."
5.0 out of 5 stars
colirized movie,
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Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Racket (Colorized) [VHS] (VHS Tape)
the film was of high quality as described. It was a content that was exactly what was described. Good item to puchase.
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