Segan ponders the art of the steal in ‘The Only Living Pickpocket in New York’

Writer-director Noah Segan’s “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York” is a modestly budgeted independent that punches well above its weight as both a grand acting showcase for the superb John Turturro and as an affectionate throwback to smartly plotted crime dramas set and shot in the Big Apple. Following a Sundance premiere in January, Sony Pictures Classics faces an uphill battle to get noticed in a crowded marketplace, but audiences who take a chance will be rewarded. Segan’s work is so carefully balanced that it is impossible to say whether the movie is primarily a character study or a tightly-constructed, cerebral thriller. 

Turturro’s Harry Lehman is an aging thief for whom the descriptor “old school” is tailor made. Segan emphasizes the tension between past and present by suggesting a world that has come close to putting light-fingered artists like Harry on permanent notice — hardly anyone carries cash anymore. The old versus new theme manifests in the movie’s emergent MacGuffin, an encrypted digital data card that leads our antihero on a concrete jungle odyssey. The old adage that you don’t steal from the mob comes into play, and while a friend of mine wondered whether Segan violates the premise by the film’s conclusion, one might push back by arguing that in Harry’s world, nothing really exists outside the five boroughs.   

The vibe of Segan’s movie, which concentrates on Turturro’s unmatched ability to convey the inner workings of his character’s mind through subtle facial expressions, cruises along with an unhurried determination. The criminal milieu, expressed in the gallery of crooks, marks, mobsters and confederates, is as colorfully imagined as the equally mesmerizing “Uncut Gems.” But where the Safdies rocketed toward a titanic conclusion with speed, urgency and adrenaline, Segan matches the measured confidence of his protagonist. We clock that a certain coolness and calmness, even when confronted with increasingly dangerous dilemmas, has been developed by Harry over decades. This guy has seen some things.  

While the title’s principal homage to the Simon and Garfunkel song might be noticed first, cinephiles will quickly draw a straight line to “Pickpocket,” the 1959 Robert Bresson masterpiece. Bresson’s tribute to Dostoevsky is indisputably the finest big screen treatment of the subject (with all due respect to “Trouble in Paradise” and “Pickup on South Street”), and Segan captures some of the same transcendental wonder conveyed by the French master. But unlike Bresson’s obsession with what Gary Indiana claims is a focus on the “expiration of humane feeling in the modern world,” Harry is a devoted husband and caregiver as well as a loyal friend. 

This is not to say that Segan anoints him as some kind of saint. Rather, the director shows us the high cost of earning a living as a small-time crook. In addition to his street smarts and his gift for separating people from their valuables, Harry’s failure as a father is highlighted in a moving scene with estranged daughter Kelly (Tatiana Maslany). Turturro is magic with every single castmate, and the presence of old colleagues Steve Buscemi and Giancarlo Esposito — two more quintessential New York players in a quintessentially New York story — sweetens the pot.