Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe: Turturro Steals Hearts in The Only Living Pickpocket in New York

Some performances remind you why you fell for an actor in the first place. John Turturro does that here, quietly, in 88 minutes. The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, written and directed by Noah Segan and released by Sony Pictures Classics, opened in New York and Los Angeles on October 23, 2026 and expands to theaters nationwide on October 30. It arrives with a festival pedigree most small films only dream about – a world premiere at Sundance on January 27, an international premiere at Berlin on February 20, then Telluride, Toronto and the New York Film Festival along the way. Critics have praised it widely at every stop. Having now seen what the fuss is about, the praise makes sense.

Turturro plays Harry Lehman, an old-school pickpocket working a city that has stopped cooperating with his trade. Wallets hold less cash than they used to. Cards cancel in seconds. Phones track everything. Harry persists anyway, with the stubborn grace of a man who learned one craft properly and sees no reason to apologise for it. Every lift funds the care of his wife Rosie, played by Karina Arroyave, and that single fact turns a caper into something tender.

A small mistake starts a very New York chase

One night Harry lifts the wrong pocket. The haul includes a USB drive holding cryptocurrency, and it belongs to Dylan, a volatile young heir played by Will Price, who wants it back on a deadline. Harry has hours to recover what he has already fenced and return it before Dylan’s family turns its attention to Rosie. The clock gives the film its pulse. Segan never lets it become a shouting match, though. The tension stays human-sized, which suits a story about a man whose real skill was never speed. It was invisibility.

His first stop, as always, is Ben’s pawn shop. Steve Buscemi plays Ben, Harry’s longtime fence and friend, and watching Turturro and Buscemi share a counter is one of the year’s small pleasures. Two New York faces, decades of craft between them, not a wasted line in sight. Around them, Giancarlo Esposito brings wry weight to a detective being nudged aside for younger officers, Tatiana Maslany finds real feeling as Harry’s estranged daughter, and Jamie Lee Curtis and Victoria Moroles round out a cast that feels chosen rather than assembled. The film was produced through T-Street, with Rian Johnson and Ram Bergman among its executive producers, and that taste for character-first storytelling shows.

Segan directs like a fan of his own city

Noah Segan shoots New York the way its residents actually use it – subways, counters, side streets, the brief eye contact between strangers that says everything and nothing. Sam Levy’s cinematography keeps the light warm and the frames uncluttered, and Gary Lionelli’s score nudges rather than pushes. At 88 minutes the film respects your evening. It says what it has to say, lands its jokes, earns its lump in the throat, and lets you out into the night still thinking about Harry.

Reviewers on the festival circuit reached for superlatives and meant them. One early four-and-a-half-star verdict called Turturro’s work one of the finest performances of his career, and another review site stamped the film, simply, a must-see. That enthusiasm fits a season full of affectionate underdog stories, from I Play Rocky and its scrappy fight to get made to gentler crowd-pleasers like a simple touch that helped bleached coral recover in the science pages. Audiences are in a mood to root for somebody. Harry gives them somebody worth rooting for.

Verdict: a warm, perfectly played little gem

This is an easy recommendation. The Only Living Pickpocket in New York is a classy, funny, quietly moving caper carried by a lead performance of real delicacy, and it treats its city and its characters with open affection. See it in a theater if you can – New Yorkers already have their chance, and the rest of the country gets it on October 30. Films this modest in scale and this generous in spirit tend to travel by word of mouth, so consider this the word. Go.

And if the trip to the cinema leaves you hungry in the best way, our pages recently marked Kulu Kulu turning 14 in Honolulu with a half-price anniversary box – a sweeter ending to an evening out is hard to imagine. Harry would approve of treating yourself. He spent the whole film doing exactly that for someone else.

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