Iconoclastic writer and director Sam Fuller’s controversial thriller was dismissed by many critics at the time as an anti-Communist, McCarthyist tract, but Fuller’s position is far more ambiguous. With a gritty style and ironic subversiveness, he investigates the underbelly of New York in the 1950s through the story of a pickpocket (Widmark) who inadvertently obtains a top-secret microfilm when he lifts a wallet from a pretty girl (Peters). Thelma Ritter is superb in the role of a Bowery denizen whose rejoinder "What do I know about Commies? Nothing. I just don’t like them" captures the irrepressible moxie of this cult masterpiece.