‘The Only Living Pickpocket in New York’ Is a Loving Ode to What Time Snatches Away

We all know how fast the world is moving, and that the tactile, analogue world has been pushed aside for the digital. In some ways, this makes us feel more secure. Your credit card has a chip in it. You can pay with digital retailers that use end-to-end encryption. Of course, these are relative illusions of safety, and on a macro level, what’s really been lost is a slower, more deliberate world, not one without risks, but at least present in a way that hasn’t created a widespread alienation from massive scams. Say what you will about the pickpocket—he’s not working at scale.

This oddly personal figure is at the center of Noah Segan’s warm, thoughtful The Only Living Pickpocket in New York. John Turturro is heartbreaking and sly in the lead role as a man who has found a soft equilibrium with the world, stealing what he can, returning what he can’t sell, and using it to stay afloat in a modest life. But this small-scale story serves as a requiem for a world that we know is fading, and what comes next will be faster, meaner, and less careful than what came before. Segan is careful not to view the past through nostalgia, but, like a faded photograph of 1970s New York City, he can’t escape romanticizing it a bit either. However, it’s a movie that recognizes that there’s no greater thief than time.

Harry is an old pickpocket who keeps his head down, knows his trade, and does what he can to support himself and his wife Rosie (Karina Arroyave), who’s in a persistent vegetative state. One night, he steals from the wrong young gangster, Dylan (Will Price), who, as a member of a powerful underworld family, is able to quickly track Harry down. Harry now has until 4 pm to retrieve Dylan’s USB card with crypto assets and must use all of his hard-earned knowledge to play other small-timers to get the card back. Along the way, he attempts to set his life in order and atone for his past misdeeds.

Throughout Pickpocket, I was reminded of Wim Wenders’ lovely Perfect Days, another story of a man with a menial, outsider job, who still loves his work and takes even greater pleasure in the analogue joys of the world. Segan pushes towards a crime thriller with the ticking clock and the bad gangsters, but this is not a world of unrelenting violence or harsh turns. If anything, there’s a matter-of-factness to the piece, and never overplaying the drama is what gives the movie its power. Segan trusts the audience to come to him, and we can understand that this older guy doesn’t carry a cell phone but now struggles to find a working payphone. He is, by every definition, old school.

The casting of Turturro here is genius, not only because he’s a great actor, but because he carries New York with him in his bones. He lives it not only through the classic movies of Spike Lee like Do the Right Thing but even more recent work like the miniseries The Night Of. The menace of the gangsters in particular recalls his turn inMiller’s Crossing, but where in that film he was a sniveling weasel begging his executioner to, “Look in your heart!” Harry is a veteran criminal. He knows the score, and he knows what matters. This is the kind of work that holds a career with it, and it makes the performance so much richer because of how much we’ve seen of him through the decades. The stoicism and grace he brings to the role feels like a crescendo on a career that’s still going strong.

Segan then surrounds him with not only other veterans, but former co-stars, casting Giancarlo Esposito as a cop who’s nearing retirement and Steve Buscemi as a pawnbroker who gets caught up in Dylan’s search for the missing USB card. But arguably the best scene comes with a younger performer, Tatiana Maslany, as Harry’s estranged daughter. It’s a simple two-person scene, but the amount of emotion between the actors clicks the rest of the story together, and even here, it feels like Segan is mourning what’s been lost in movies. There’s no horror villain that’s a symbol for trauma, nor is this the climax of a big action scene. It’s just two people talking, and yet it holds as much power as any of the classic crime dramas the movie uses as inspiration. To use a much bigger New York crime drama as a basis for comparison, Segan knows the highlight of The Godfather isn’t Sonny getting shot a billion times at the toll booth. It’s “Don’t ask me about my business, Kay.”

But just as The Godfather also inhabited a world that had faded from view, so too does The Only Living Pickpocket in New York understand that crime, like any industry, has to adapt to technology, even as people get left behind. The fact that it hits criminals and upstanding citizens alike gives the film a bittersweet punch, leaning into the idea that the only thing that matters is the relationships you make and what you do to maintain them. Harry’s greatest crime has nothing to do with what he stole, and everything to do with failing to care for his daughter. His love and attention towards Rosie are his atonement, and it’s this beautiful center that makes the movie glow. We don’t necessarily have to weep for everything the digital world has gobbled up, but a commitment to what’s tangible also reminds us of what’s important. A watch can be replaced. Moments can’t.

The Only Living Pickpocket in New York opens in limited release on October 23 before expanding on October 30.