John Turturro as Harry in The Only Living Pickpocket in New York.
By WOODY WEINGARTEN
The Only Living Pickpocket in New York is easy to review — because it features a tour de force performance by John Turturro, famed for his understated roles in Coen Brothers and Spike Lee films and for his Emmy-winning tenure on the TV series Monk.
For the full hour and 28 minutes of this new gritty crime drama, he, as low-level pickpocket Harry Lehman, is either shifty-eyed or fearful but either way, moviegoers aren’t expected to lift their eyes from him.
So we watch in awe as his hands slip into a variety of pockets while he surreptitiously watches everyone else. And we witness the jumpstart of his real trouble shortly after he lifts an apparently valuable USB drive from Dylan, wealthy Gen-Z son of a mob boss.
It’s unclear what’s on it, but it’s clear that Dylan and his cronies want it back. Desperately.
The wild, menacing young men threaten him, saying “there’s no comin’ back from this,” and then also threaten his “old lady” if the USB stick isn’t returned — a trigger for a frenzied do-or-die backtracking with a series of offbeat characters, including Steve Buscemi as Benny, pawnbroker/friend and fence.
During that journey, viewers revel in shots of New York City, not the predictable shots of the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, and Brooklyn and George Washington bridges but, instead, extraordinary shots of ordinary neighborhoods in each of the city’s five boroughs, images that truly provide a sense of the city.
Those insightful views contrast sharply with, at the beginning of the lyrics of a song that softly blankets the action, “New York, I love you, but you’re bringing me down.”
The suspensefully hypnotic film, which has several twists, is not without humor — such as when Harry meaningfully sits on his hands while talking and laughing with longtime friend, NYPD Detective Allan Warren (played by Giancarlo Esposito), and even more so when he catches a wannabe crook trying to pick the pocket of his expensive cashmere coat. He grabs the guy’s hand and instantly gives him a tutorial in how to do it right.
Turturro, who many believe will be nominated for an Oscar for this role, which would be his first nomination, runs a gamut of emotions as an old-style pickpocket struggling to make ends meet.
He is sad, for instance, because his potential marks no longer carry wads of cash but only credit cards that can typically be cancelled with little disruption of their lives. And they wear Timex-priced watches instead of Rolexes.
He is extremely loving, poignant, and uptight when dealing with his bedridden, disabled wife, Rosie (Karina Arroyave). He carries her up the stairs when their building’s elevator is on the blink. He holds her hands, brushes her hair, talks to her even though she can’t talk back, cooks noodle soup. And when he goes out, he pays a neighbor to look after her.
Turturro, a native of Brooklyn, and Harry, who’s being digitally stalked, complement each other.
Says Harry in the Sony Pictures Classics film that’s deftly directed by Noah Segan, “I’ve had a good life…What matters is what you did with the time you had. I spent my life in people’s pockets.”
The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, elaborates Turturro, is a “tense kind of thriller…and at the same time…all this human delicacy and gentleness.”
The movie, the world premiere of which was at Sundance, where it was a crowd favorite, was also shown at the recent Mill Valley Film Festival. It’s scored in the high 90th percentile for both critics and public on the Rotten Tomatoes website.
The Only Living Pickpocket in New York will have a free Bay Area screening at a 7 p.m. Oct. 21 AARP event, for which registration is required, and will screen the same day at the Sonoma International Film Festival. It will open in Los Angeles and New York City on Oct. 23, and across the country Oct. 30, including AMC Metreon 16 in San Francisco, AMC Bay Street 16 in Emeryville, and Cinemark Century Daily City.
Woody Weingarten, a longtime voting member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle, can be contacted via his website, https://woodyweingarten.com, his email — voodee@sbcglobal.net — or his other website, https://vitalitypress.com. His four books include Rollercoaster: How a caregiver can survive a partner’s breast cancer or any other lethal disease; MysteryDates — How to keep the sizzle in your relationship; The Roving I, a compilation of 70 of his newspaper columns; and Grampy and His Fairyzona Playmates, a whimsical fantasy intended for 6- to 10-year-olds that he co-authored with his then 8-year-old granddaughter.
