If you’re persistent enough, you can find movies on Amazon Prime that are older than my kids. I’ve been plumbing the depths of Amazon Prime and stumbled into a genre I’ve never really watched, forgettable James Coburn movies (so most James Coburn movies).
I recently watched the 1973 pickpocket feature, Harry In Your Pocket. Which, let’s face it, sounds dirty. But it wasn’t it was about a team of pickpockets: the Steer, the Stall, the Dip/Hook/Cannon and the guy with the bad hair. As the poster says, Harry is the world’s greatest cannon. This is because he has rules, a lot of rules, the only stated one being “Harry doesn’t hold.”
Together they traveled the country lifting wallets and living it up in the finest hotels. It sounds terrible. Yet, somehow it wasn’t. From what I’ve seen, it was fairly accurate to the craft and lingo of the pickpocket trade, even to Coburn and Pidgeon lamenting how it’s a dying skill and how these kids today would sooner pull a knife and how credit cards are communism. I’m not saying it was exciting. But it wasn’t bad. Maybe it was because it was of a different era. Maybe I really needed to see something different. Maybe it was because Walter Pidgeon had a coke problem. Whatever the reason, it made for a nice distraction on a slow Saturday.
