Expected more

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Blistering performances.

The Racket is very exciting, and it pins Robert Mitchum against Robert Ryan. It's hunk versus hunk, and only the audience can pick their favorite! Poor Robert Ryan, always playing the villain, even when paired with other bad guys; he's always the even bigger bad guy!It's film noir, suspenseful, gritty, and even has elements of romance with Lizabeth Scott. Robert Mitchum stars as a police chief on the lookout for notorious gangster Robert Ryan. The trouble is, Robert Ryan has much of the police force in his back pocket, so Robert Mitchum doesn't get a lot of help from his coworkers as he tries to nab the bad guy. And when Lizabeth Scott enters the picture, he and the audience have to determine whether she's really falling for him or she's just been ordered to distract him. . .The Racket is extremely entertaining and reminds me of the grit of Pickup on South Street, so if you're a fan of that Richard Widmark flick, rent this one on a rainy afternoon. It's perfect for a girls' night, too, since you've got both Roberts to drool over! If someone forced me, really forced me to choose, I'd pick Robert Mitchum, but I'd hate to hurt Robert Ryan's feelings. What about you?

These two Robert Ryan movies form the early 50's would make a great double-feature. Both are good movies full of faces that would become familiar on television in the coming years. A comparison of the two movies is also interesting The Racket was done for Howard Hughes' RKO studio. Horizons West was a Universal picture. Both had famous directors, John Cromwell, (supplemented by several others, including Nicholas Ray) and Bud Boetticher. The Rackett is a re-working of a successful play and movie from the 1920's with a screenplay by WR Burnett, (High Sierra among others). Horizons West is done by Louis Stevens, a veteran writer of movie westerns, (this appears to be his best work). Ryan is the main "bad guy" in both movies but in each case, he's much more complex than that. His Nick Scanlon in The racket is violent and intimidating, almost reptilian. He's fully formed as a heavy from the moment we meet him. But we find out he either grew up with or went to school with Robert Mitchum's police Captain: in the grand tradition, they came from the same background but went in different directions. We also learn that Ryan sent his now troublesome younger brother to college to keep him out of the rackets. He clearly doesn't think much of the crooked politicians and new "corporate" crooks that are running things. And in the end, his revenge is to "tell the voters to vote for the honest politicians". Underneath the violence, he has a certain integrity. Something- we never learn what turned him against society while Mitchum remained well-adjusted and on the right side of the law. In Horzions West, Ryan starts out being a good guy, or at least not a bad guy yet. He comes home from the Civil War with his brother, (Rock Hudson), and a loyal friend named "Tiny", (James Arness). As they arrive in Texas, they have a conversation about the future. Arness wants to raise his family. Hudson wants to work the family ranch, just like before. Ryan shows a harder edge. He wants to make it big. They arrive in town, (Austin) to see that Yankees carpetbaggers have made it big. Ryan ties to associate with them but gets on the wrong side of Burr in poker game and is on the outside looking in. He organizes a band of out-of-work soldiers and deserters into a cattle rustling operation and establishes connections with a Mexican military officer who is running a crooked operation across the border. Eventually he gets even with Burr, who is killed. And has an affair with Burr's pretty young wife, (Julie Adams). In the beginning our sympathy is with him but as he grows more and more powerful, he becomes more ambitious and ruthless, which makes him too many enemies and causes his eventual downfall. In Horizons West, Hudson becomes the town sheriff and has to take on his brother, thus paralleling the Ryan-Mitchum relationship in The Racket. In that film, Ryan killed a policeman played by William Tallman, who became famous as Hamilton Burgers on Perry mason. In Horizons West, he kills Hudson's deputy, who is played by Jim Arness, soon to be famous as Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke. William Conrad, radio's Matt Dillon, appears as a corrupt policeman in The Racket. That film has two actors from Perry mason, the other being Ray Collins, who played Lt. Tragg. Horizon's West has two actors form Gunsmoke, with Dennis Weaver playing a very un-Chester-like gunman. Both films have a heavy dose of corrupt public officials. Both of them have a major movie star to face off against Ryan, although Rock Hudson was early in his career and never became the dramatic force Mitchum was. But Ryan dominates every scene he's in, no matter who is in it with him.

Slightly above average crime drama with Film-noir elements that has some outstanding highlights and some very pedestrian lowlights.A couple of realistic action pieces and a vile, nasty performance from Robert Ryan are negated by some contrived side elements and stiff political posturing, and very weak love interests.Surprisingly the real bad guy..."the old man" who is the head of the crime syndicate is never brought to justice, or for that matter even identified. This is an intentional cover-up by the filmmakers and deliberately deflected at the end. As if to say, no matter how many of these street thugs we arrest, the master criminals of the Racket are above the law.This was a bold "oversight" slipped in, from an industry that was hand-cuffed by a code that stated...CRIME DOES NOT PAY. Very clever.

Robert Ryan made a career of playing against type. Off-screen, he was a warm-hearted, intelligent man who fought against injustice and campaigned for civil rights. In character, he frequently played sardonic, sadistic villains. Maybe being 6"4" with the swagger of the ex-Marine and college boxer he'd been, coupled with a face of chiseled granite, contributed. And he was never more entertainingly sociopathic than as Nick Scanlon in "The Racket." A loose cannon mobster allied with a national crime syndicate, he refuses to cool his natural taste for violence to protect his associates' political power plays. His adversary and ex-childhood pal is staunchly honest cop Robert Mitchum. Together, they strike sparks in what has been incorrectly described as a "noir" film. It's more of a tough, smart gangster movie. There are stand-outs throughout, led by Ray Collins' sweaty, corrupt DA and Don Porter's smooth syndicate "front." But it's Ryan who ambles off with the acting honors.