Desiring upward mobility, trucker Raymond (Spencer Tracy) organises a protection racket amongst the other truckers to blackmail business owners and amass his owner fortune…
I heard about Roland Brown through Criterion’s Instagram account.
I found this film a little hard to follow at first - it covers such a vast span of time I had to re-adjust to the character’s evolution. The print I watched was also pretty beaten up.
Released around the same time as early gangster classics Little Caesar and The Public Enemy, Quick Millions follows a character’s rise-and-fall story.
The rise of Raymond (Spencer Tracy) from a truck driver to a gangster is explicitly about capitalism.
Raymond finds he cannot progress through the system by legitimate means. He has worked hard, but he cannot move upwards. He sees the system is rigged to benefit a few and sees a path to his own fortune.
Only when he uses blackmail (through his knowledge of the trucking sector and gangster allies) to gain control of the sector, is Raymond able to make himself a mover and shaker in society.
Of course, despite moving in their circles, the blue-collar Raymond is never accepted by the established members of his new class.
And the criminals he used to rise to power turn on him when he tries to become a ‘legitimate’ businessman.
Dark and downbeat, Quick Millions gets over in 70 minutes what later films would take hours to develop.
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