AMUSEMENTS

Opotiki News, Volume II, Issue 255, 6 November 1939, Page 4

AMUSEMENTS

“RACKET BUSTERS.’ Timeliness lias been the watchword of the 'Warner Studio ever since it lirst set a new fashion in screen entertainment with “Public Enemy” and “Little Caesar,” and the Warner Bros.-Cosmopolitan production entitled “Racket Busters,’’ which opens tonight at the Regent Theatre, carries on that tradition of live pictures about live topics. Humphrey Bogart, George Brent, Gloria Dickson, Allen Jenkins and Walter Abel are .featured; in the leading roles, and while the city in which the plot of “Racket Busters” unfolds is obviously New York, the film treats of a condition which is common to virtually every large American city. It is not soi much the story of what any one man has done or can do to eradicate the manifold evils of racketeering as it is the story of what an aroused citizenry can do to put an end to. this civic cancer. It depicts the ruthless methods employed by a sinister racketeer, played by Bogart, to exact tribute from the trucking business of a great city. It tolls of the efforts oi a special prosecutor. played by Abel, to end the nickel. Bui. mainly it tells of the hemic, light against the mobsters put up by a small number of truckmen and' how eventually this light is siicccsslul when Brent, first a leader in the light and then fold'd by domestic troubles to make peace with the racketeers,- takes up the battle again when the racketeers oiulavom* to cut oil' 'the whole city’s food supplies. “SUNSET TRAIL Stage coach travel .becomes so' t fraught with danger in the days of the frontier West that one man stakes his life on the turn of a single card to make it safe again. That man is “Hopalong Cassidy,” played by William Boyd once more in Paramount’s “Sunset Trail,” the latest of this series which screens to-night and Tu<%day at the Regent Theatre. A notorious gambler and outlaw terrorises the trail to Sacramento, finally committing a robbery and murdier which drives “Hopalong” into action. With ilis pals “Windy” and “Lucky”, ‘ ‘floppy” blows into town, and proceeds to flash money until he gets the gambler into a card game. “R'eppy” turns the right card and securing .some of the gambler’s money, establishes him as the man who has made the trail unsafe. In a thrilling pursuit, “Floppy” succeeds in gaining the upper hand* lor fhe forces of law and order.