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| Joyce Mackenzie and Robert Mitchum in THE RACKET Year: 1951 Rating: ***1/2 |
Based
on a let's-fight-city-corruption picture from 1928, and remade to
center on a then-current anti-mafia-probe, it's no wonder that RKO's THE
RACKET plays out so deliberately over-the-top, where Robert Ryan not
only openly admits to being the head of an illegal/totally corrupt
syndicate, but shoots and kills an honest lawman right inside a police station...
with a cub reporter witness only inches away...
In that, Ryan gets
most of the praise for a performance that's more 1930's teeth-clenching
gangbusters than subtle 1950's noir, which, for the lack of alleyway
shadows and femme fatales, many claim this feature as being something
other than...
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Robert Mitchum and Robert Ryan in THE RACKET
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Which
is an ongoing/never-ending debate on any b-crimer that isn't dreamily
melodramatic the likes of OUT OF THE PAST... segwaying into the other
Robert here in Robert Mitchum, the star of several Howard Hughes
productions, where, on the heels of playing likable losers in THIS KIND
OF WOMAN and THE BIG STEAL, this is his most solidly straightforward
performance...
As a police chief the syndicate moves around in
order to never press permanent charges, and with scene-stealing/ideal-driven good cop William Talman by his side, Mitchum doesn't simply breeze around with his handsome slow-burn cool, but really fits the part with
both feet planted firmly on the ground...
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| Robert Mitchum and Robert Ryan in THE RACKET |
The
biggest problem (besides pretty Lizabeth Scott in a
throwaway nightclub canary/dame role) is that everything's too up-front, particularly with Ryan's scrunched-up mug exploding into
temper-tantrums....
In one reaction shot, Mitchum
seems to intentionally smirk at Ryan's overacting: playing more of a
head gangster's viciously lethal thug than any kind of realistic big boss, making
THE RACKET more a good vs evil fable than either noir or your typical standard
detective story.
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| Robert Mitchum and Robert Ryan in THE RACKET |
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| Ray Collins in THE RACKET |
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| Robert Ryan in THE RACKET |
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| William Talman and Virginia Huston in THE RACKET |
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| Virginia Huston in THE RACKET |
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| From THE RACKET |
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| William Conrad in THE RACKET |
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| William Talman in THE RACKET |
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| William Conrad in THE RACKET |
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| Lizabeth Scott and Robert Hutton in THE RACKET |
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| Joyce Mackenzie and Robert Mitchum in THE RACKET |
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