Alicia I love this movie so much

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Justina The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

HotToastyRag 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?

GManfred Very enjoyable and well done film noir bolstered by an outstanding performance by Robert Ryan as the head bad guy. Robert Mitchum is the Police Captain goaded and ridiculed by a snarling Ryan; they go back a long way, you see, and Mitchum's virtue and purity bewilders Ryan. There are lots of recognizable Hollywood character actors that populate the cast, adding weight and gravitas to the story. Not sure it's necessary at this late date to summarize the plot, but suffice it to say that Ryan has a stranglehold on all the key politicians in this city, which sometimes looks like New York, other times not. And so Mitchum is determined to break Ryan's hold and put him in jail. It's not as easy as it sounds. I could watch film noir all day long and this was one of the best of the genre. Can't find a flaw in it, except to say that it comes off as a little stagey at times, as though adapted from the stage (it's not). And no one could project menace like Robert Ryan.

Robert J. Maxwell Any movie with principals like Robert Ryan, Robert Mitchum, and Lizabeth Scott certainly sounds "noir", especially with support like William Conrad and William Talman. But this isn't. It's more of a "detective story." That may be just as well because I understand that some people have difficulty pronouncing the word "noir." Briefly, Mitchum is the new Chief of Police brought into District Seven to clean up some of the corruption, which, as it turns out, leads all the way up through the judicial system. Mitchum is the straight arrow. He wears a suit and tie and has a domestic life, as hard as that is to believe.The proximate bad guy is Ryan as Nick Scanlon. He runs all the local rackets in this unidentified city with the connivance of the politicians. He's Ryan-as-bad-guy through and through. He never asks for quarter nor does he give any.This puts him on the spot because The Syndicate is moving into more sophisticated territory, with front organizations like The Acme Real Estate Company, money laundering, and probably structured derivative instruments. Ryan knows nothing about this stuff. He's an old-fashioned kind of gangster. Somebody gets in his way, he spanks him.The plot gets kind of complicated. Talman is a good cop who arrests Ryan's brother for carrying a concealed weapon. That puts him in bad with Ryan and he pays the price. Lizabeth Scott and Robert Hutton are folded into the story with nothing much to do.Most of the scenes are static shots of people standing around and talking. There are some brief action scenes too -- the obligatory car chase through the city streets, the explosion of a bomb on Mitchum's porch, two shootings. Well -- three, I guess, but the third takes place off screen and is pretty well handled.Some of the action scenes are less than well done. Mitchum and a horde of cops have a couple of hoods cornered in the garage of an office building. Mitchum pursues one of them up the stairs to the roof, where they have an ill-staged brawl. And what do the rest of the police do? Instead of rushing to his aid, they stand on the street below, with their arms folded across their chests, and watch the fist fight with considerable interest.Mitchum, when he got a good part, could really rise to the occasion, as he did in "Night of the Hunter," "Cape Fear," "The Sundowners", and "Farewell, My Lovely." This part must not have engaged him because he walks through it without any expression except an occasional smirk.The steely-eyed Ryan, on the other hand, is a cauldron of emotion. He has a terrific scene in which he tells Mitchum of the trouble his younger brother has caused him. Something like, "I paid his way through four colleges. FOUR! I even had to buy a chair at one of them. Well, not a chair. They call it an endowment." (Ryan kicks a chair.) The poor guy is beset by problems -- what with his brother determined to marry that night club canary, Scott, and the pressure from The Old Man above to lay off the rough stuff. Sometimes a man can't win for losing.

kenjha A crime boss has all the city politicians on his payroll, but must contend with an honest police captain. Saddled with an extended and talky exposition, this film takes a while to get going, but then turns into a solid crime drama. As the crime boss, Ryan is a mean, sneering, and intimidating figure, a type of role he could have played in his sleep. Mitchum is fine as the cop who has the guts to take on Ryan. As a nightclub singer, Scott not only looks like Lauren Bacall but also displays the toughness typical of Bacall in her films with Humphrey Bogart, including "Dead Reckoning," which was also directed by Cromwell. It is helped by a good supporting cast.