The Racket

Boldy begins where the senate crime committee left off!

Based on Bartlett Cormack's popular Roaring Twenties play, Racket is a hard-hitting action drama about a tough cop trying to put a mean racketeer out of business. Robert Mitchum plays Captain McQueeg, an honest man in a city of corrupt politics. Both the town’s prosecuting attorney, Welch (Ray Collins), and the police inspector, Turck (William Conrad), are on the dole from kingpin mobster Scanlon (Robert Ryan) and his band of trigger-happy goons. McQueeg persuades knockout dame Irene (Lizabeth Scott), a chanteuse at Scanlon’s club, to squeal on Scanlon's kid brother. When Scanlon hears that Irene is going to sing for the judge, he decides to put a permanent lid on her. But even if McQueeg can save the girl and catch Scanlon, he’s still got his own crooked bosses to contend with. Ryan turns in a stellar performance as the villain, and Racket's dark, action-packed plot, handled masterfully by seasoned director John Cromwell (Dead Reckoning, of Human Bondage), hurtles like a midnight train toward the film's stunning conclusion.