Review of Harry in Your Pocket (1973) by Allan C — 08 Feb 2015

I quite liked this film. I'd never seen this story about a team of pickpockets traveling first class up and down the west coast running their pickpocket schemes. Michael Sarrazin and Trish Van Devere are the newer and younger members of he team led by the charming James Coburn.

Best of all though is Walter Pidgeon as an aging pickpocket with a drug addition who Coburn keeps around more out of sentimentality than out of necessity. The film definitely has the anti-establishment sentiment of the time, but take a very different route than the usual "Easy Rider" Turn on, tune in, drop out type of sentiment, but was more living outside the system and their laws to live the good life, and instead living by their own code of what's right.

But at the heart of the film are the characters who make the living by deceit and are never sure about the other, but who all also seem to care a great deal for each other. The film works as something of a subculture film, like "Rounders" that took you into the world of underground poker or "Suburbia" did for puck rock scene or any number of other films that take you into a secret world in a fascinating way.

It's a terrific little film that today would probably have been a small independent and not a major Hollywood studio film. The 70s was definitely a renaissance time for Hollywood.