“It's amazing to see how acute the Stateside Simenon was on encroaching corporate culture.”-British Film Institute

“I believe in families,” gentle-voiced gangster Sid Kubik (Larry Gates) assures his ex-employee Eddie Rico (Richard Conte) in the living room of his genteel apartment, while down the hall, Eddie's brother Gino is tortured on Sid's orders. “Thanks, Uncle Sid,” Gino growls between guttural moans. The Brothers Rico rewrites the greeting-card sentiments of fifties family values into a treatise on entrapment and betrayal. Believing he's left his mob ties behind, happily married Eddie now runs a successful laundry business. But nothing is harder to wash out than blood, and when he hears his two brothers are in trouble, Eddie is drawn back under the influence of Uncle Sid. While mothers and wives worry about the future, the younger Rico brothers face an awful fate inadvertently enabled by loyal, responsible Eddie. A final triumph for the nuclear family doesn't negate the damage; instead, it only reinforces a gangster's wisdom, “You can't buck the system.”
—Juliet Clark