Best movies like Pickup on South Street

How the law took a chance on a B-girl … and won!

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Pickup on South Street Starring Richard Widmark, Jean Peters, Thelma Ritter, Murvyn Vye, and more. If you liked Pickup on South Street then you may also like: Walk a Crooked Mile, Flanagan, We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, While the City Sleeps, The Red Menace and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.

In New York City, an insolent pickpocket, Skip McCoy, inadvertently sets off a chain of events when he targets ex-prostitute Candy and steals her wallet. Unaware that she has been making deliveries of highly classified information to the communists, Candy, who has been trailed by FBI agents for months in hopes of nabbing the spy ringleader, is sent by her ex-boyfriend, Joey, to find Skip and retrieve the valuable microfilm he now holds.

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Walk a Crooked Mile

A security leak is found at a Southern California atomic plant. The authorities stand in fear that the information leaked would go to a hostile nation. To investigate the case more efficiently, Dan O'Hara, an FBI agent, and Philip Grayson, a Scotland Yard sleuth, join forces. Will they manage to stop the spy ring from achieving their aim?

Flanagan

Aging New York cabbie Flanagan still has hopes of making it as a stage actor. He can recite any Shakespeare sonnet and is facile with accents, but he can't land an agent or a job. During the course of one summing-it-all-up day, he drives his cab around the city dealing with fare evaders, an insolent stage manager determined to keep him from auditioning for his choice director, his estranged wife who has a new lover, his mistress who seems awfully close to her "drawing teacher", and two teenage sons whose bright visions of the future don't seem to include jobs. If he can only cope with all the annoyances of this day, maybe he can deal with the limitations in his abilities and his future.

We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks

Julian Assange. Bradley Manning. Collateral murder. Cablegate. WikiLeaks. These people and terms have exploded into public consciousness by fundamentally changing the way democratic societies deal with privacy, secrecy, and the right to information, perhaps for generations to come. We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks is an extensive examination of all things related to WikiLeaks and the larger global debate over access to information.

While the City Sleeps

Newspaper men compete against each other to find a serial killer dubbed "The Lipstick Killer".

The Red Menace

A couple try to leave the Communist party after a murder by the group they were once loyal to.

Jinx Money

A man wins $50,000 in a card game with gamblers, but is soon found dead and the money missing. Slip and Sach find the money near where the body was discovered, and soon find themselves the target of both the police and the gamblers.

Billion Dollar Brain

A former British spy stumbles into in a plot to overthrow Communism with the help of a supercomputer. But who is working for whom?

Breach

Eric O'Neill, a computer specialist who wants to be made an agent is assigned to clerk for Robert Hanssen, a senior agent with 25 years in the FBI, and to write down everything Hanssen does. O'Neill's told it's an investigation of Hanssen's sexual habits, however Hanssen is really suspected of spying for the Soviet Union and Russia for years and being responsible for the deaths of agents working for the United States.

Condorman

Comic artist and writer Woody performs a simple courier operation for his friend Harry who works for the CIA. But when he successfully fends off hostile agents, he earns the respect of the beautiful Natalia, who requests his assistance for her defection. Woody uses this request as leverage to use the CIA's resources to bring his comic book creation, Condorman, to life to battle the evil Krokov.

The Informer

In New York, former convict Pete Koslow, related to the Polish mafia, must deal with both Klimek the General, his ruthless boss, and the twisted ambitions of two federal agents, as he tries to survive and protect the lives of his loved ones.

Shack Out on 101

A greasy spoon diner provides a base for a spy smuggling nuclear secrets.

Cry of the City

Petty crook and cop-killer Martin Rome, in bad shape from wounds in the hospital prison ward, still refuses to help slimy lawyer Niles clear his client by confessing to another crime. Police Lt. Candella must check Niles' allegation; a friend of the Rome family, he walks a tightrope between sentiment and cynicism. When Martin fears Candella will implicate his girlfriend Teena, he'll do anything to protect her. How many others will he drag down to disaster with him?

The Manchurian Candidate

Near the end of the Korean War, a platoon of U.S. soldiers is captured by communists and brainwashed. Following the war, the platoon is returned home, and Sergeant Raymond Shaw is lauded as a hero by the rest of his platoon. However, the platoon commander, Captain Bennett Marco, finds himself plagued by strange nightmares and soon races to uncover a terrible plot.

The Chairman

An American scientist is sent to Red China to steal the formula for a newly developed agricultural enzyme. What he is not told by his bosses is that a micro-sized bomb has been planted in his brain so that should the mission ever look likely to fail, he can be eliminated at the push of a button!

The Courier

Cold War spy Greville Wynne and his Russian source try to put an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The International

An interpol agent and an attorney are determined to bring one of the world's most powerful banks to justice. Uncovering money laundering, arms trading, and conspiracy to destabilize world governments, their investigation takes them from Berlin, Milan, New York and Istanbul. Finding themselves in a chase across the globe, their relentless tenacity puts their own lives at risk.

Tentacle 8

A mysterious computer virus wipes out highly classified personnel files at the NSA, prompting a top secret investigation. RAYMOND BERRY, an NSA operative is thrown into a detention center, where he is suspected of crimes against the United States. He fights to stay alive, hoping to reunite with TABITHA, a CIA agent he has recently fallen in love with. Ray discovers that Tabitha is not who she says she is, complicating his plans to escape his former life and start over in anonymity.

My Son John

In this Cold War drama, a woman suspects her son is a Communist spy.

The Penalty

In this crime drama, a ruthless gangster's son is soon following in his father's footsteps. When his daddy kills an FBI agent and a cabby, the boy sees it all. Fortunately the courts intervene and send the lad off to live with a family of farmers.

Shadows & Lies

The story of William Vincent as he recounts the eccentric and curious path that has brought him, at mortal risk, to New York City, after four years in exile, to rescue a woman he scarcely knows, Ann, from the vague crime syndicate that first brought them together.

The Sleeping City

A young doctor taking a break from work is shot in the head, and the police can't find a clue even as to a possible motive. Inspector Al Gordon (John Alexander) decides that he has to put some men on duty at the hospital, and one of them is Fred Rowan (Richard Conte), a detective with experience as an army medic, masquerading as an intern. What Rowan finds is a high-pressure world in which interns are hopelessly squeezed for time, sleep, energy, and -- most of all -- money, and walk a fine line on the edge of personal and professional disaster.

The Thief

A chance accident causes a nuclear physicist, who's selling top secret material to the Russians, to fall under FBI scrutiny and go on the run.

Hoodlum Empire

It's a deadly play for power when a Mafia chieftain's top gun goes straight and threatens to testify against the big boss and his cruel, nationwide network of crime. The picture, which was shot in a semi-documentary style, was inspired by the Kefauver investigations of 1950-51.

Smashing the Spy Ring

G-Men in Washington break up a powerful spy ring and capture the ringleaders.

Blindfold

A patient being psychoanalyzed by Dr. Snow is a government scientist. General Pratt hides him in a secret place known as "Base X," forcing Dr. Snow to wear a blindfold whenever he is taken there ...

Diplomatic Courier

During the Cold War, diplomatic courier Mike Kells must retrieve a dispatch containing top-secret intelligence. But when he arrives at the meeting point, a train station in Salzburg, his contact turns up dead, and the message is nowhere to be found. With no clear suspect in sight, Kells must sort through his uncertain relationships with two women, while sidestepping the pitfalls of subterfuge, sabotage and spies in his search for the documents.

Hot Enough for June

A young man travels to Prague to join his new employer, unaware that he is being used as an espionage courier.

Man on a String

U.S. spies catch a Moscow-born U.S. citizen helping spies, and they force him to counterspy.

A Thousand and One

Struggling but unapologetically living on her own terms, Inez is moving from shelter to shelter in mid-1990s New York City. With her 6-year-old son Terry in foster care and unable to leave him again, she kidnaps him so they can build their life together. As the years go by, their family grows and Terry becomes a smart yet quiet teenager, but the secret that has defined their lives threatens to destroy the home they have so improbably built.

Classified

Babs Comet is employed by the classified ad department of the daily paper and uses her looks and position to get a husband.

Hell-Bound Train

A jeremiad against intemperance, jazz music, and abortion, set on a train filled with unrepentant sinners hurtling toward damnation.

Down Three Dark Streets

An FBI Agent takes on the three unrelated cases of a dead agent to track down his killer.

Master Minds

When Sach eats too much sugar, he goes into a trance whereby he's able to predict the future. Slip tries to make some money off of Sach by using him as a fortune teller in a carnival, until a mad scientist kidnaps Sach to use him in an intelligence-switching experiment with a monster.

Dusting Cliff 7

In this action adventure, a former hit woman comes out of retirement to rescue her daughter from kidnappers. The child's abductors demand that the ex-killer retrieve a highly classified document. They give the woman 24 hours to succeed. If she fails, her daughter will die.

Missing Evidence

G-Man Bill Collins swings into action when a crooked sweepstakes racket begins insinuating itself upon the honest citizenry of the US. The crooks have flooded the market with counterfeit lottery tickets, reducing many an unwary speculator to poverty.

Three Brave Men

A lawyer takes the case of a Navy clerk who sues after he's fired for suspected Communist beliefs.

Girl on the Spot

Eleven Gilbert & Sullivan numbers are melded within the murder-mystery plot of "Girl on the Spot", with a result that either G&S and/or the plot are always seemingly on stage-wait or in the wings awaiting a cue. Lois Collier is the girl-on-the-spot of the title because she was on the scene of a murder. The police conclude she didn't do it and they use her to set a trap for the real killer, a G&S addict, by financing a Broadway production starring Collier.

The Killing Mind

Isobel Neiman, a former FBI agent turned cop, is assigned to catch a ballerina's murderer, but runs into resistance by fellow cops who don't think a woman detective can handle the case.

I Was a Communist for the FBI

A fact-based story about a man who posed as an American Communist for years as part of a secret plan to infiltrate their organization.

Undercover Doctor

Dr. Bartley Morgan covers up his profitable illegalities with the respectable veneer of a posh, highly profitable private practice, he runs with his nurse Margaret Hopkins. The FBI agent Robert Anders has to catch on to Morgan's illicit activities.

The Stoolie

Roger Pitman is a petty thief who makes a deal with the police to use bait money to trap other criminals. But when he gets the cash, Roger can't resist the temptation and steals part of it. He runs off to Miami Beach, but now lives in fear of the crooks that he set up as well as the police.

The 49th Man

Two federal agents do not believe an atomic-bomb threat is just another war game.

Highly Dangerous

A US newsman and a British entomologist spy on germ-warfare research in a mythical country.

Sky Liner

Travellers board a flight, unaware that other passengers might be spies and counterspies, complete with secret documents, poison and elaborate plans to engage in international espionage!

The Pretender

Story of an investment agent who embezzles a large sum from an estate, hoping to cover his crime by marrying the estate's heiress. The girl is already engaged, so he arranges to have the fiance killed. A mix up involving the society section of the newspaper places him in the sights of his own hired gun.

Stopover Tokyo

An American intelligence agent is sent to Tokyo to track down a Communist spy ring.

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