Pickup on South Street

"If you refuse to cooperate you'll be as guilty as the traitors who gave Stalin the A-bomb". "Are you waving the flag at ME?!" Samuel Fuller's sensational film noir casts a steely eye at America in the dawn of the Cold War, and brings 1950s New York City alive on the screen in a manner rarely equalled in the annals of film. In one of his greatest roles, Richard Widmark plays Skip McCoy, a seasoned pickpocket who unknowingly filches some radioactive loot: microfilm of top-secret government documents. Soon after, Skip finds himself mixed up with federal agents, Commie agents, and a professional stoolpigeon by the name of Moe (played by Thelma Ritter). With its complex ideology, outrageous dialogue, and electric action sequences, Pickup on South Street crackles in a way that only a Sam Fuller movie can, and is widely considered one of the director's finest achievements. (Eureka Entertainment)