A subway pickpocket (Richard Widmark) palms a wallet and with it, a valuable piece of microfilm the wallet's owner (Jean Peters) is unwittingly transporting from one Communist agent to another. Thus begins a Cold War spy thriller/gangster noir pitting petty thieves and cheap whores against agents provocateurs in a ramshackle New York waterfront setting. Combining Sam Fuller's intense nationalism with his crime-reporter sensibilities, Pickup goes beyond anti-Communism to become an investigation of personal loyalties and ethics on the gutter level. A mood of chilling pessimism verging on anarchism informs the whole film, and is nowhere more evident than in the audacious love story-the abusive Widmark hell-bent on getting back into Peters's purse. Humanity emanates from one unlikely source, the stool pigeon Moe (Thelma Ritter), who sells neckties and information to the cops but who happens to be an angel. Actually shot in L.A., the film is a masterpiece of Fuller mise-en-scène.