Sundance Review: John Turturro Leads 'The Only Living Pickpocket in New York'

John Turturro plays a seventysomething pickpocket hunting wallets across all five boroughs in The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, Noah Segan's second feature, which premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival and opens in theaters on October 23. The Film Stage has designated it a Critics' Pick.

Segan's film follows Harry Lehman (Turturro), one of the last relics of a New York that was, in the review's words, "novel, dangerous, and vibrant." The critic frames the story as The Wild Bunch meets Gloria: an aging thief coming to terms with the imbalance of the good and bad in a life, and whether that balance even matters in the end.

Who is Harry Lehman?

Harry pounds the streets in a compulsive search for pocket plunder. Like the vintage Rolex on his wrist, the review writes, he is "classy, a bit worn, and precise — an analog man in a digital era." His successors have moved from the streets to the internet, a shift embodied by his younger partner-in-crime Evie, played by Victoria Moroles.

Harry brings his modest bounties to his longtime friend and fence Benny, played by Steve Buscemi, then returns to a modest Bronx apartment. There he cares for his disabled, bed-ridden wife Rosie — reading, singing and dancing for her, speaking to her as a devoted husband despite her inability to respond.

What sets the plot in motion?

One night Harry lifts a gym bag belonging to Dylan Diamond (Will Price), the spoiled scion of a powerful crime family. Benny identifies the watch inside as a Rolls-Royce item, but the two septuagenarians cannot decode a curious USB stick found in Dylan's wallet.

The device turns out to be a crypto wallet. The oblivious Harry unloads it in Chinatown with the rest of his lot, unaware that Dylan and his goon squad are already on his trail. They hold Rosie hostage in exchange for the wallet, sending Harry on a desperate tour of the five boroughs and through the friction of the past bumping up against the present.

How does the film handle old New York versus new?

Technology drives the film's contrasts. A vape store fronting an iPhone-laundering operation stands against Benny's old-school pawn shop. Harry's plucked watches, however nice, are worthless because, as Benny says, "everything's got a clock on it." At home, Harry dances to his vinyl of Odyssey's "Native New Yorker" and shines his shoes on a box once prevalent on city streets. His tech savvy, the review notes, stopped somewhere in the Clinton administration; when he borrows a smartphone to make a call, its owner is in disbelief that Harry knows the number by heart.

Dylan, the villain, is an amalgam of modern technology's less savory aspects — a millennial who traffics in cryptocurrency and gloats over the "value added" features of his Apple watch versus an analog timepiece.

Nostalgia also flows through scenes between Harry, Benny and friendly detective Allan, played by Giancarlo Esposito. They share the classic mindset in which Manhattan is simply "the city" — a place you work your way up to from the outer boroughs, a sentiment the review calls less pervasive in the era of remote work and the corporatization of Brooklyn and Queens. Esposito's detective mentions his family relocating to Staten Island, nodding to the city's housing affordability crisis. The review calls these conversations a eulogy, delivered by three actors synonymous with a pre-Giuliani New York: Turturro, Esposito and Buscemi.

What makes it a New York movie?

Segan is a fourth-generation New Yorker, and the review says the film shows it. Harry's relationship with his neighbor is friendly but cautious — she looks after Rosie when asked, yet interacts only through a cracked door. Rather than the touristy Veselka in the East Village, Segan seats Harry across the street at the low-key B&H Dairy.

The outer boroughs carry the film. Harry lives in the Bronx's Belmont neighborhood, home to the borough's Little Italy, with stops in Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island. The review argues shooting New York on location automatically adds production value, while imitating it cheapens the world — Segan's film as another example of the city as the quintessential "fifth character."

The film borrows openly from the crime dramas that leveraged the city, naming Dog Day Afternoon and The French Connection, with a camera that voyeuristically tracks Harry's wide-lapel overcoat over a funky score evoking Gordon Parks following John Shaft. Like those street-level films, it sympathizes with Harry without forgiving him — loving antiheroes while acknowledging the halcyon high-crime era ultimately hurt people.

With a Critics' Pick stamp, a Sundance 2026 premiere behind it and an October 23 theatrical release ahead, Segan's film positions itself as a working answer to its own closing question: how much good can make up for a life of harm.