Turturro Plays a Pickpocket Facing a Changed New York in Segan's New Film

Harry Lehman works the subway and the sidewalks of New York, lifting watches and wallets from commuters who no longer carry much cash. The pickings have thinned, but the bills have not. His wife Rosie cannot move or speak, and her care costs money, which sends him back out each day to work his trade.

John Turturro plays Harry in The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, a drama written and directed by Noah Segan. Karina Arroyave plays Rosie. Steve Buscemi plays Ben, a pawnshop owner who has worked with Harry for years and takes the watches off his hands. Kelvin Han Yee plays Frank, who runs an herb shop downtown and cleans stolen phones before they are shipped out of the country.

The plot turns when Harry lifts a USB crypto wallet from Dylan, a young criminal played by Will Price. Ben cannot make sense of the device; plugging it into a desktop computer from around 1995 sends the machine into a tailspin. Ben sends Harry to Frank, and the trouble starts there.

Segan has worked mostly as an actor, appearing in Brick, Looper, and the Knives Out films with director Rian Johnson. Blood Relatives, released in 2022, was his first feature as a director. Sam Levy shot the film; his credits include Frances Ha and Lady Bird. The camera follows Harry from the Bronx to Chinatown.

Turturro came up through the 1990s as a frequent presence in Spike Lee and Coen Brothers films, playing parts with a tight, coiled energy. He wrote and directed Fading Gigolo in 2013, in which he played a florist who becomes an escort. In this film he plays a man who cares for his wife, dances with her to Odyssey's 1977 song "Native New Yorker," and works the subway in a tweed coat he may have bought two or three decades ago, back when the money was better.

Harry talks to Rosie, laughs with her, and suggests one evening that they stay in and watch an old Barbara Stanwyck picture. He belongs to a New York of the 1970s and 1980s, of dance clubs and independent cinemas. The city he moves through now has fewer people carrying cash, and credit cards do him no good unless he is willing to break the law to use them.