The Racket

 Robert Mitchum has a really tiny mouth.

As another near-Oscar, this film's main strength was its plot. The story develops in clear pieces as major climaxes come and pass, to let the audience catch its breath. Although the themes are clear and laudible, the story itself does not have that epic-feeling ending typical of Hollywood where everything's settled, and the world can continue toward Utopia. The ending is actually "happy" without being orgasmic. I consider it fine work.

The protagonists are policemen, and the bad guys are criminals, but there are criminals in the middle as well, and good guys who have yet to make up their minds. In this way, the characterizations featured here are remarkably nuanced for the era. Even now, when our tendency is to romanticize criminals, we rarely find that kind of balance in a world set up clearly as a conflict between good and evil. We tend to see every character as clearly good or clearly evil, although possibly disguised as the other.