Pickup on South Street

A pretty basic noir. Detectives with hats, shady characters doing shady things, a femme fatale and a crime-based plot. And lots and lots of talking. Endless conversations between mediocre actors that feel quite forced. Then again, the few action scenes there are just as uncomfortable.

Skip McCoy is a pickpocket who picked the wrong wallet to steal. The woman he stole it from, Candy, had a microfilm tucked in her wallet that she was supposed to give to a communist spy. The FBI and police were on Candy's back, but now that McCoy has the chip he has to deal with all the unwanted attention.

I'm just not a big fan of these classic noirs. The stories are interesting enough, but the execution is usually pretty boring. Bland cinematography, poor performances and static action scenes don't do a lot of justice to the premise. At least these films tend to be rather short, but that's not much of a comfort when there's so little there.