Race Street

In San Francisco, bookie Dan Gannin (George Raft) quits the racket and opens a nightclub. He offers his pal Hal Towers (Harry Morgan) a piece of the club to get out as well but Hal turns him down. Then thugs murder Hal by throwing him down a flight of stairs. Dan goes searching for the killers. The stairs may be the best part of the movie especially when the thugs take Dan back to the place where they killed his friend. It's the best scene. I hoped for more San Francisco street scenes. Those street scenes have a vibrancy that is missing from much of the movie. Raft does a workmanlike job but he doesn't shine like a movie star. The story doesn't pop with the exception of certain scenes. All in all, it's a functional crime noir thriller.

George Raft is said to have turned down more than one role that ended up making someone else's career. Sam Spade in "The Maltese Falcon," for example. Yet the movies he did choose are for the most part flat and predictable. I like him as a tough guy. He does it well. "Race Street" is strictly routine. He won't pay protection money, with predictable results. Harry Morgan is excellent in a fairly small role. William Bendix, who always turned in a fine performance, is very good as a cop. And Marilyn Maxwell is the femme fatale. She's OK. But her performance is unexciting. We neither hate her nor feel sorry for her. Maxwell essentially executes a plot contrivance.

Interesting Bill Bendix and George Raft film filled with back-stabbing galore. With Bendix as the cop and Raft as a bookie, threatened by a protection racket, we have a taut story here. Marilyn Maxwell is Raft's new love interest who is lying through her teeth. She sports a black wig here, but Bendix recognizes her for what she is. Interesting to see Raft in a role trying to go straight. This is basically the story of friendship and betrayal as told by the Bendix character. When their friend, played by Henry Morgan, is killed for not playing ball with the racketeers, Bendix and Raft step in to avenge his murder, but in different ways. The film would have been better had it been longer. The Maxwell character, the stinker that she was, could have been stretched to show how evil she really was. You know this is a different film for George Raft as he is not throwing that coin up and down in the manner that only he could do.