PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET (1953)

Director Sam Fuller's masterpiece PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET is now sixty years old, but it's lost none of its punch. In some ways, this cynical story of a pickpocket (Richard Widmark) and a prostitute (Jean Peters) who try to navigate a maze of cops and Commies is more pungent and thrilling than ever. Two of noir's greatest antiheroes in one of the best movies of the 1950s--but given the current headlines about domestic spying, Fuller's cynicism seems uniquely fitted for our times.

Check out my new essay on the film over at Criminal Element.