Good concept, poorly executed.

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

After two of four straight interminably labored scenes that open this early sound primitive it becomes apparent the filmmakers are content just to capture the turgid dialog in flower potted mikes. The Racketeer is one numb clunker of poor pacing and bad acting.Sartorial resplendent racket chief Mahlon Keane ( Robert Armstrong ) is living the good life by way of prohibition and other illegal activities. Upbeat, good natured and generous he thinks nothing of putting a fifty dollar bill in a vagrant/street musician's pocket to prevent him from being nailed for vagrancy. In this particular case it will come back to haunt him both personally and professionally when he gets mixed up with the violinist's former wife Rhoda (Carole Lombard) who is struggling to get Tony Vaughn back on his feet and back onto the concert stage. With a big assist from Keane he gets his chance but shows his gratitude by trying to wrest his ex back from him.As the dapper racketeer Armstrong looks and carries himself convincingly but sometimes is left with nothing to say from one sluggish scene to the next. Lombard rotates between strident and flat while Roland Drew's Tony serves up thick slices of ham. Howard Higgins direction does seem to be relegated to making sure the microphone is on but given the pedestrian audio should nevertheless be commended for trying to capture it on actual city streets, albeit poorly and unimaginatively.

In 1929, in New York, the powerful mobster Mahlon Keane (Robert Armstrong) meets the bankrupted former socialite Rhoda Philbrooke (Carol Lombard) in a poker game of a benefit fund-raiser party and helps her to cheat the game. Rhoda had divorced from her wealthy husband to stay with her alcoholic lover, the violinist Tony Vaughan (Roland Drew), and is financially broken. Mahlon feels attracted by Rhoda and helps her to recover the health of Tony and promotes his career. Later Mahlon proposes Rhoda, who accepts to marry him, but a couple of hours before their marriage in a yacht, Tony tells Rhoda that he loves her. While Rhoda thinks how to tell Mahlon about her love for Tony, a tragedy happens in Tony's dressing room."The Racketeer" is one of the first American features in the sound age, and has a dated melodramatic story of a triangle of love composed by a gangster, a musician and an ex-socialite. This film is only reasonable, having silly dialogs, average theatrical performances, terrible quality of sound with a terrible voice intonation of the cast and the images have not been restored, therefore is full of problems. The Brazilian DVD released by London Distributor, has an additional problem, with the bad quality of subtitle in Portuguese, full of mistakes, without synchronization and using capital letters in the first letter of every sentence. "The Racketeer" is only recommended as a curiosity of the transition between silent and sound features. My vote is five.Title (Brazil): "O Gangster" ("The Gangster")

I enjoyed this 66 minute film despite the overly theatrical delivery of almost every line. One gets the impression that this film was directed by an eighth grade home economics teacher. Despite this annoying drawback, the story is sweet and there is a genuine chemistry between the leading lady, Carole Lombard, and the head gangster played by Robert Armstrong.Carole Lombard is attractively photographed and has a large amount of quality screen time here. She is pulled in two directions by two men who genuinely care for her. One is a concert violinist who we are introduced to early on in the picture as a man who has been reduced to nothing more than a bum in the gutter. The other is the suave gangster who for the first time has found something in this life greater than himself. The question is: who needs her most and who truly loves her? And in what direction will fate allow her to go.The dramatic ending will tug at your heart-strings. This was Carole's last picture for Pathe studios.

Well mounted, interesting story about suave racketeer Armstrong falling for impoverished deb Lombard, hampered a bit by the declamatory style of speaking any speech longer than three words and apparent immobility of microphones.