Filmmaker Noah Segan lets the camera linger a little longer than might be expected on a penny in his directorial debut, “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York.” The coin serves as a vintage tool for John Turturro’s petty criminal Harry Lehman to jimmy open a car lock. But between the film’s production and release, the U.S. Treasury officially stopped minting pennies, adding another layer of meaning to an insert shot already loaded with associations about extinction and obsolescence.
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Straight out of the gate, Segan delivers what feels like a time capsule movie for the recently concluded Eric Adams era of New York City—and, perhaps, anticipates the nascent Zohran Mamdani administration. (As a bonus, there are scenes in all five boroughs!) “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York” mourns the loss of a city that once sustained a vibrant working-class and stood aspirationally for upward class mobility. Turturro’s titular thief may still be alive, but the place they once called home is dead all around them.
This is no city for old men. In its place is a playground for the young, rich, and established. The New York of the film—and, increasingly, of reality—is a destination where people go to spend their fortune rather than make one. The aging Harry has already begun the reverse migration process, settling into a dingy Bronx walk-up after five generations of his family toiled to work their way into Manhattan.
New York surrendered to the billionaire class and now belongs to overeducated and underachieving brats like Will Price’s Dylan Diamond, who initially appears like an easy mark for Harry when his classic car—adorned with New Jersey plates—rolls into the tony Chelsea neighborhood. Yet this target proves to be more than the garden variety zonked-out Zoomer. He’s connected with organized crime’s new frontier in cryptocurrency, and an unaware Harry chunks a USB drive from Dylan’s wallet that unlocks hundreds of millions of dollars.
This digital device becomes the MacGuffin that drives “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York” forward once Dylan tracks Harry down and threatens to harm his ailing wife. The film works a little less well as a city-spanning crime thriller, though, in large part because Harry does not serve as a menacing antagonist. Price’s characterization and Segan’s writing turn the character into more of a ludicrous crypto-bro stereotype, vacillating wildly between portraying Dylan as smarmy and sinister. It takes a while for the threat he poses to Harry’s livelihood, as well as a network of friends like the pawn shop owner Ben (Steve Buscemi), to feel as serious as they are.
Dylan’s broad nature stands out, too, because the film is otherwise so full of detail and nuance. Segan evokes the shadings and trappings of grimy ’70s cinema when then-Mayor John Lindsay first facilitated street-level views of New York in cinema. Cinematographer Sam Levy tips his hat to the era’s visual hallmarks, both with signature camera moves like the snap zoom and through a general commitment to capturing the grit and local color of city life.
Refreshingly, “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York” does not depend on callbacks and direct references to create meaning. Rather than trying to recreate the magic of a New Hollywood B-side like “The Friends of Eddie Coyle,” he casts its spirit into the present day. Segan locates how the new urban fault lines influence the behavior of common people. Ironically, characters like Harry were once at the vanguard of heralding youthful disruption … and now stand to be on the losing end of such a cultural changeover.
Nowhere does this quiet tragedy of time leaving people behind better manifest in the film than in John Turturro’s subtle performance. Unlike Price’s Dylan, who’s all raw nerves and chatty charisma, the veteran actor can hold the screen in his stillness. His face reveals so much by doing so little, and it’s riveting to find the history inside his hangdog visage. It almost feels like a betrayal of the character when a late-stage detour with an estranged family member (Tatiana Maslany) offers the opportunity to spell out some of the backstory that informs his actions.
Turturro’s greatest gift to the project, however, lies in his ability to bridge the micro- and macro-level stories in the film. His committed character study opens the aperture onto how one lonely pickpocket can illuminate the battered soul of a changing city. “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York” might not be anything revolutionary, but it sure is revelatory. Segan laments a bygone bustling past, speaks to an uncertain present, and points to New York’s eternal beacon of hope to tease the promise of future renewal. [B]
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