John Turturro has made a career out of playing offbeat characters. Think of him as the doomed Bernie Bernbaum begging for his life in the 1990’s Coen Brothers feature Miller’s Crossing. Or as the profanity-spouting bowler Jesus Quintana in a second Coen Brothers feature, 1998’s The Big Lebowski.
It’s not as if in his long career the 69-year-old Turturro hasn’t played more balanced characters as well. His Emmy-nominated role as a lawyer in the 2016 HBO miniseries The Night Of is a prime example. But because he doesn’t possess anything close to traditional leading-man looks, Turturro has always fared better playing someone … well, let’s just say unusual.
That’s certainly the case with the feature film The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, which was written and directed by Noah Segan and which stars Turturro as the title character.
Turturro plays Harry, a career criminal but mostly in a petty way. He lives in the Bronx and cares for his catatonic wife Rosie (played by Karina Arroyave). But he makes a living by prowling the city, day and night, roaming from borough to borough, lifting whatever he can from, say, a rich guy walking on the sidewalk or anyone not paying attention on the subway.
He takes his earnings – set off that word with quote marks – to his friend Ben, a pawn-shop owner (played by Steve Buscemi). Ben isn’t above taking stolen goods even if he is unwilling to pay much for the second-rate stuff that is mostly all that Harry is able to pilfer in a world that depends less on cash and seemingly more on cheap knock-offs of more valuable items.
Then one night Harry does score big. He spots a young guy driving a vintage American muscle car bearing a vanity plate: ITSA1969. And quicker than you can say snatch he has the guy’s wallet and athletic bag, the former from which he pulls a hunk of cash and the latter that – upon discovering a pistol inside, oooh foreshadowing! – he deposits in a trash can.
So of course there’s a catch. Amid the other detritus that he’s stolen over the day, much of which Ben isn’t interested in, Harry tries to pawn off a strange device that both he and Ben can’t recognize – even after attempting to connect it to Ben’s ancient computer. Which is unfortunate, because the device – a USB crypto wallet – is actually worth a lot of money. And the owner, the young muscle-car driver Dylan (played by Nick Price), desperately wants it back.
So even as Harry heads into Chinatown to see an acquaintance of Ben’s who might know what the device is, Dylan – who we learn is connected to a powerful crime family – is busy tracking him down through the device itself. Turns out that it pings when attached to any computer – in this case Ben’s. Soon Dylan and his crew are on Harry’s doorstep, and Harry – who has since sold the device – finds himself cornered and threatened: Return the device or else Rosie might not like what happens next.
So begins Harry’s sojourn, first to find the device – which is no easy task – and then to find a way to save Rosie and, if possible, himself. As he does so, in the four-hour time limit that Dylan has given him, he pauses to attempt to connect with his long-estranged daughter (played by Tatania Maslany) – an encounter that, for Harry, smacks both of desperation and long-held regret.
Writer-director Segan has constructed a film that explores both the makeup of a man and of the realm of the city in which he lives. As played by Turturro, Harry is a guy who’s survived long enough – on the edge and otherwise – to understand how he’s lived, the wrongs that he’s done and how he’s tried, if more than a bit late, to make up for them.
Not everything works. Segan’s plot takes some too-convenient turns, and it ignores a few of what seem to be obvious points (one involving computers and another Dylan’s ability to follow the money no matter where it ends up).
But as long as the film focuses on Harry, it moves smoothly. No matter how eccentric the characters are that he plays, Turturro makes them feel authentic. If nothing else, when it comes to paying for the kind of life he’s chosen to live, his Harry faces his fate with a resolve far closer to Jesus Quintana polishing a bowling ball than a doomed Bernie Bernbaum begging vainly for mercy.