Friday Noir #146: ‘The Racket’ ratchets up strong tension between Mitchum and Ryan
The Racket tackles on a subject matter that can be rather confounding for unsuspecting viewers hoping to relish in a good old fashioned yarn about two tough guys having a blistering tête-à-tête from start to finish. Make no mistake, the battle between the film’s chief protagonist and antagonist does transpire, and the scenes in which both actors face off against each other explode with tension, only that director James Cromwell and the duo of screenwriters painstakingly depict nearly every aspect of municipal corruption they see fit in order to properly, if in somewhat convoluted fashion, present the facts of the case to the audience.