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It’s become commonplace in recent years: movies set in New York, telling distinctly New York stories, yet shot entirely somewhere else like Ireland. Given Hollywood’s economic slowdown, an indie production can be forgiven for doing whatever it takes to get a film made. Still, many films no longer seem interested in even attempting to suspend disbelief about place.
Which makes “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York” feel like a minor miracle and a welcome update to the New York crime movie genre. Writer-director Noah Fagan shoots not only in Manhattan, but across the city’s outer boroughs like the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn, capturing a New York that feels authentic rather than postcard-ready. The film’s most satisfying image arrives late: a 360 view of the harbor skyline seen not from lower Manhattan but from the murky New Jersey shoreline, lensed by Sam Levy with bracing clarity. Though the credits list a Los Angeles unit, its scenes disappear seamlessly into the world of the film.
This Sundance-premiering indie drama stars John Turturro in a controlled, assured performance as Harry Lehman, an old-school pickpocket shaped by decades on New York’s streets. He’s a con man guided by a code. A funk-inflected score—think “The Payback”-era James Brown—may land a bit heavy-handed, but it effectively establishes a tone of Big Apple toughness the moves in to a rhythm measured in city blocks and subway stops. Fagan, a protégé of Rian Johnson whose T Street banner produced the microbudget film, delivers a script that moves with confidence and precision. The visual language toggles purposefully between wide shots and tight close-ups, mirroring Harry’s ability to survey a room and zero in on his take with surgical precision. Before the opening credits, Harry lifts a wallet from a Wall Street guy on the subway — who only notices the loss once he’s seated at a white-tablecloth lunch downtown.
Harry wears the same gray tweed trench coat and polished brown leather oxfords throughout the film. The coat’s hidden inside pocket — a key tool of the trade — becomes a kind of uniform, like that of a janitor or a waitress — neat, understated and designed to disappear. But Turturro doesn’t rely on wardrobe or makeup to sell the character. Harry is a man of few words, so the performance hinges on his physical control and interiority. Turturro delivers both. His pickpocket research is evident — he practiced by lifting from cast and crew — and his movements register with quiet confidence. Harry doesn’t flare up when threatened; he turns inward, calculates, and seizes upon his next move chameleonlike.
Petty theft in Harry’s world follows strict rules: analogue only. No credit cards. No fraud. Just cash and pawnable items destined for resale. When Harry brings his take to Ben, a pawnshop dealer played with steady warmth by Steve Buscemi, he explains that his Wall Street mark carried “all platinum cards” but no cash. The problem is immediately clear: Harry’s expertise hasn’t vanished, but its value has shrunk in a consumer economy dominated by Apple Pay and swipe-lock security.
That friction between analogue and digital fuels one of the film’s central tensions and produces its best humor. In one scene, Harry hands Ben an external data card to load onto Ben’s ancient, 40-pound desktop computer. The machine can’t even read it, yet still manages to alert the card’s owner. “That’s how they get ya,” Harry and Ben mutter, realizing the system demands an upgrade. Later, Harry refers to a corrupted file as having “an illness,” prompting a Gen-Z character to translate: he actually meant virus.
The ensemble cast gives the film its emotional weight. Tatiana Maslany—unrecognizable, as usual—leaves a devastating impression as Harry’s estranged daughter. Harry’s wife Rosie, unable to walk or speak and requiring constant care, is rendered with extraordinary sensitivity. Through the smallest facial shifts and precise physical stillness, the actor conveys a full inner life. A brief but piercing detail completes the portrait: Rosie’s once high-pitched voice, preserved on an answering machine Harry refuses to discard, offers a glimpse of the woman she once was. Lori Tan Chinn charms as a cantankerous Chinatown grandmother, while Jamie Lee Curtis makes a memorable meal of her single scene as a mob boss.
The film’s boldest choice may be what it refuses to show. No guns are waved. No bodies pile up. Violence exists as pressure rather than spectacle. When Harry discovers a gun in one of his hauls, he tosses it into the trash. When Ben’s shop windows are smashed, we find him stunned on the floor, clutching a bat. “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York” proves that crime stories don’t need bloodshed and gratuitous violence to land with force.
What emerges is a New York crime drama attuned to the present moment, one that makes space for aging lifers like Harry and Ben alongside younger characters born bluetooth enabled. Everyone struggles to remain in a city where rent keeps climbing and even five-generation families can’t hold onto their homes. The film treats New York itself as a character — not just Manhattan, and certainly not only the Upper East Side — moving with restraint and confidence, grounded in the primary source of its charm: real New Yorkers.
Crucially, the film avoids the trap of scolding younger generations or romanticizing the past. “I like that they don’t just get put on the shelf,” a woman sitting next to me at the Sundance premiere whispered as the credits rolled, phone already back in hand. She’s right. Harry adapts, relying on Ben’s Gen-Z relative (Victoria Moroles), a computer whiz who handles the digital transactions Harry would never be able to —or want to — master. It’s impossible not to root for Harry and Ben: two flawed, aging men sustained by skills learned the hard way. They pick locks by feel, break into old cars with pennies, trade favors, maintain relationships, and above all, know how to “work,” as Harry puts it, actual human beings. Ultimately “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York” shows us that old school and new school aren’t opposites. Like the city’s many seeming contradictions, they are meant to coexist.
Grade: A
“The Only Living Pickpocket in New York” premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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