By Jason Osiason

The Only Living Pickpocket in New York moves with a breezy, slightly shaggy 70s style that mostly works. The storytelling feels intentionally old school. Loose, character driven, wandering through the city rather than constantly pushing toward big plot fireworks.

The movie follows Harry Lehman, an aging subway pickpocket played by a never better John Turturro. Harry still works the trains the old fashioned way, lifting wallets and watches with quiet precision in a city that has largely moved past his kind of criminal craft. The film drifts through his daily routines, his small network of fences and contacts, and the quiet life he keeps trying to maintain while the world around him keeps changing.

That throwback style becomes the movie’s biggest strength. It dodges a lot of the obvious crime movie beats by simply refusing to rush. The story unfolds more like a portrait of a fading New York archetype than a traditional thriller. You spend time in diners, subway cars, cramped apartments, and neighborhood corners that feel lived in rather than cinematic.

You feel that old New York everywhere. In the settings. In the characters. In the way people move through the city. There’s even a great extended cameo from B&H Dairy that immediately grounded the movie in the kind of scrappy, stubborn New York institutions that somehow keep surviving.

John Turturro absolutely carries the whole thing. Harry is charming but morally slippery, the kind of thief who might lift your watch but still return your wallet. Turturro plays him with a warmth and melancholy that makes the character feel like someone whose entire way of living is quietly disappearing.

The film never takes big bold swings and occasionally that restraint holds it back. When it tries to lean into bigger emotional moments the movie can get a little schmaltzy. The Maslany storyline in particular never quite lands and the sentimentality there starts to feel forced.

But even with those bumps the movie still feels rewarding. It’s beautifully directed and full of affection for the city and the scrappy ways people used to navigate it. [B]