The Racket

A national crime syndicate has taken the city. The local boss, Nick Scanlon, works with them but in the old way: threats, beatings, bullets. The syndicate no longer operates like that; it buys the prosecutor, the judge and the election. Captain McQuigg is one of the few honest men on the force and he is after Scanlon. The problem is not Scanlon but the nameless machine behind him, and Scanlon is the only man McQuigg can hit. The film's target is not street crime but the clean-looking layer above it. John Cromwell directs the American film; eighty-eight minutes, with Robert Mitchum as McQuigg and Robert Ryan as Scanlon. It is a remake of the 1928 film of the same name, both produced by Howard Hughes. Hughes took the picture out of Cromwell's hands; Nicholas Ray, Tay Garnett, Mel Ferrer and Sherman Todd all reshot parts of it without credit.