“I lived my life in people’s pockets,” sighs Harry (John Turturro), a smalltown thief who belongs as much in a museum as he does on the busy streets of New York. Harry is a throwback, and so is this modest but really rather mesmerizing and forlorn film, one that’s curated just as much as it is directed. It’s about things past, about things gone, but also things that won’t stay dead as much as society wants that to happen. It’s also a film about vanishing bohemia, and it’s no coincidence that many of the film’s storied leads are played by leading lights of New York’s iconic independent movie scene.
The mood is established early on; Harry is the ghost-like presence you were always warned about, his hand in your pockets, his coat buttoned against the cold. In the film’s opening moments, he’s already off to the races; every handbag or wallet is a goal. But even with his advanced instincts, this pro sometimes comes a cropper, as happens when he tries to sell a fake stolen watch (“But the guy was legit — he had platinum cards!”). More pathetic than that, it seems that stolen watches aren’t even a thing anymore. “Everything has a clock on it,” deadpans Harry’s regular fence, played by Steve Buscemi.
In scenes reminiscent of John Cassavetes’ The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Harry digs himself into a hole after lifting a stranger’s bag from his retro car, and this is where the film’s central thesis really kicks in. Henry’s old-school trickery is certainly something to be admired, but in today’s world of CCTV and Google, the slim-Jim phantom of old is a cliché, and Henry is swiftly tracked down by his victim, Dylan (Will Price) — the rich, arrogant (but by no means stupid) heat-packing scion of a serious Manhattan crime family — who threatens what Henry loves and values the most, his seriously ill wife.
Dylan perfectly articulates such generational changes in New York gang culture; he wants his family to “uplevel” to the cyber world, and it’s clear that “the street” is far beneath him — Dylan is all about crypto, while Henry doesn’t even have a computer. Thus, Dylan doesn’t take long to find Henry and immediately sends him back to find the most crucial thing that he’s missing, a piece of tech that means nothing to the dinosaurs of Manhattan’s old-school demi-monde but everything to the new disciples of post-money money. Along the way, Henry uses his time to reflect on the very real-seeming end of his life, turning up, uninvited, for an awkward reunion with his estranged daughter.
Director Noah Segan, so far better known to the cognoscenti as a recurring mascot in the films of Rian Johnson, creates a truly impressive and very mature directing debut from all these elements, tapping into the funky flow of Jack Hill’s so-white-yet-so-very-cool blaxploitation movies but, at the same time, winding that vibrancy down into the countdown melancholy of Spike Lee’s very underrated 25th Hour. Indeed, for all its minor-key notes and self-effacing comedy, this is really a very serious film about loss, and while the plight of a petty street thief might seem like the least of our worries, Sagan’s film wants to capture these dark moments; in a Diane Arbus way, before they’re gone.
The Only Living Pickpocket in New York is interesting in that respect, because it talks of quite a taboo subject, which is the way in which criminality informs not just art but society, and the strange, but special romantic attachment we have for criminals while professing to deplore the things they do. It’s a film steeped in nostalgia, for the time when “you did have the cash or you didn’t have the cash” (a direct quote from Dylan’s surprise-guest grandma, the real, ruthless head of the gang). But it’s also a wonderfully acted love letter to the Manhattan indies that dominated the ’80s. It’s an early call, but next year’s under-the-radar awards season may well start here; get in early and put Turturro on the ticket.
Title: The Only Living Pickpocket in New York
Festival: Sundance (Premieres)
Sales: T Street
Director/screenwriter: Noah Segan
Cast: John Turturro, Steve Buscemi, Giancarlo Esposito,Will Price, Tatiana Maslany
Running time: 1 hr 28 mins
