Everybody’s hustling in New York City, one way or another. Unless you are very lucky, just making a living requires constant improvisation and flexibility, one eye always attentive to opportunity. You can never really get complacent. If you do, it’s probably time to get out.
But Harry Lehman (a spectacular John Turturro) hustles more than most. His main trade is pickpocketing, and he’s a pro. He dresses nicely, in a black polo and houndstooth coat, and avoids raising suspicion. But he knows how to spot a mark — someone whose phone or wallet isn’t quite secure, especially if the person seems like kind of a jerk. That’s what made Dylan (Will Price) such an appealing target: His arrogant swagger and vintage car make it clear this kid has money and an inflated sense of himself. Unfortunately, Harry wasn’t bargaining on what comes along with Dylan.
I’ve lived in New York for half my life now, and I confess I haven’t thought about pickpockets in a long time, in part because I’ve never had my pocket picked. After watching “Only Living Pickpocket,” written and directed by Noah Segan, I found myself holding my bag a little closer.
But that’s far from the movie’s point. Instead, it’s the story of something familiar to every city dweller: the loose spider web of connections that we create, day after day, by necessity or affinity. The baristas and bartenders, delivery guys and bodega owners, casual friends and close companions that we interact with regularly become a kind of family, people you instinctively rely upon. Harry has them too. There’s Ben (Steve Buscemi), who owns a pawnshop in the Bronx and helps Harry find buyers for his items, and Eve (Victoria Moroles), a younger thief who’s like a niece to him.
Even Detective Warren (Giancarlo Esposito), who’s been working the petty crime beat for years, is something more akin to a tenuous buddy than a foe. When the men run into each other on the train, they chat like old friends, though Harry knows enough to sit on his hands while they’re talking. And whether friend or frenemy, everyone asks after Harry’s wife, Rosie (Karina Arroyave), who has been more or less catatonic for years.
“The Only Living Pickpocket in New York” is remarkable in many ways, first among them Turturro’s performance. Somehow, despite a 40-year career full of memorable roles, Turturro is still underrated. This movie lets him showcase all of his best qualities; he gets to be quick-witted and fleet-footed, but also full of love and grief. We watch him plot his moves, but are never ahead of him, which means we get the delight of seeing him succeed and the catharsis of being glad we’re not the mark. Every inch of him makes sense in this role, and he’s surrounded by great actors, especially Buscemi as a similarly long-lived hustler and Tatiana Maslany as Harry’s estranged daughter.
It’s also the sort of human-scale New York film, wryly shot in the style of a 1970s crime drama, that is pure delight, full of characters you pass on the street or sit next to on the subway or buy a Yoo-hoo from at the corner. You have to know a city to make a movie about it that feels right to its inhabitants, a feat especially enjoyable here because Harry goes to every borough. He lives in the South Bronx. He gets exasperated about having to take the train all the way down to Manhattan’s Chinatown and back again. At one point he goes from Sheepshead Bay to Forest Hills. (And yes, he gets to Staten Island eventually.)
Harry, Ben and even Detective Warren also engage in a favorite pastime: complaining that New York was better back in their glory days. Their inability to use basic items of this decade’s technology furnishes some pretty funny moments in the film, but there’s something wistful about it, too: In the past you could just cleanly lift a wallet without worrying about someone leaving an AirTag in it, and nobody was thinking about cryptocurrency. Their nostalgia feels reminiscent of characters from “The Sopranos,” always wishing they lived in the heyday of the mob. You don’t really sympathize with their lifestyle, but you sympathize with the sentiment.
The movie opens with the strains of LCD Soundsystem’s “New York, I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down,” a good approximation of the film’s mood. Harry is a thief with a heart of gold and a history full of regrets; he’s tried to make some amends, and there are others he never intends to make. He loves his city and finds it littered with memories of happier times. Now he wants peace, and in an act of kindness, this movie gives it to him, and invites us along too.
The Only Living Pickpocket in New York Rated R for bad language, danger and a little violence. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. In theaters.
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