Thursday, August 24, 2017

Movie review - "Race Street" (1948) ** (warning: spoilers)

Dore Schary slaps his name on this film as head of production, just so everyone knows. This was the third of four films George Raft made for RKO after the war - it was directed by Edwin Marin, with whom he worked a number of times around this time.

It's an unpretentious programmer with Raft ideally cast as a night club owner who goes looking for revenge when his bookie friend Henry Morgan is killed.  He keeps cop Bendix out of it.

There's interesting bits - it's set in San Francisco and there's some location shots of the city; Gale Robbins plays Raft's sister (she's much younger) and does this number filmed in a travelling shot; Marilyn Maxwell is pretty and vivacious as Raft's widowed girlfriend (I'm surprised she didn't become a bigger star); the scene where Raft discover Morgan's body. It's good how Raft dies and how professional the baddy operation is.

But this doesn't quite work. I kept wanting it to be better than it was. It's the story I think - there's no complication. Robbins doesn't do anything except sing when her character should have been under threat somehow or used to complicate things eg betray her brother, be in love with someone who is killed. There's a good bit where Maxwell is revealed to be still married to the main baddy.... but we have no final scene with her (she gets arrested off camera). Raft, Bendix and Morgan are all just friends instead of being motivated to be close - like brothers, or all kids who used to hang out with each other. Raft's sidekick cronies feel under-used. And while the direction has it's occasional flairs, overall things felt a bit flat.


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