# Turturro's finest hour as a pickpocket in changing New York

> John Turturro delivers a career-best performance in Noah Segan's drama about an aging pickpocket struggling to survive in a cashless city.
- Title: Turturro's finest hour as a pickpocket in changing New York
- Summary: John Turturro delivers a career-best performance in Noah Segan's drama about an aging pickpocket struggling to survive in a cashless city. John Turturro…
- Keywords: john turturro, the only living pickpocket in new york, noah segan, film review, new york, pickpocketing, drama, news, world, Turturro's, finest, hour
- Source: TIME — https://time.com/article/2026/10/30/only-living-pickpocket-in-new-york-review
- Author: Stephanie Zacharek
- Published: 2026-10-30T12:00:02.92+00:00
- Read time: 2 min
- Topics: john turturro, the only living pickpocket in new york, noah segan, film review, new york, pickpocketing, drama, news, world
## A pickpocket's problem
Harry Lehman, played by John Turturro, is an aging pickpocket in 2020s New York. Almost no one carries cash anymore, and credit cards are useless unless you commit fraud. His skills are obsolete.
## Harry's daily hunt
Harry boards the subway in his soft, elegant tweed coat, identifying easy targets. He spots checked-out, earbud-wearing Wall Street dudes and women with dangling purses. He sees what others miss.
## Caring for Rosie
Harry's wife Rosie has an unnamed ailment and cannot move or speak. His days revolve around caring for her tenderly, talking and laughing with her. She is his bright spot.
## A moment of joy
Harry puts Odyssey's nineteen seventy-seven disco hit Native New Yorker on the stereo and dances for both of them in a disco-salsa shuffle, his arms whirling as if the breeze were his dance partner.
## Money for Rosie's care
Rosie's care costs money, so Harry hustles harder. He steals watches and phones, working with pawnshop owner Ben, played by Steve Buscemi. Ben connects him to Frank in Chinatown to scrub stolen phones.
## A crypto wallet complication
Harry steals a USB crypto wallet from Dylan, a brazen young criminal and spoiled rich kid.Ben cannot handle it and sends Harry downtown to Frank, whose herb shop front masks his real work.Harry's troubles begin.
## Segan's nimble direction
Writer-director Noah Segan has worked mostly as an actor with Rian Johnson, appearing in Brick, Looper, and the Knives Out movies.He directed the two thousand twenty-two horror movie Blood Relatives.
## Turturro's transformation
Turturro was once tightly coiled energy with the Coen Brothers and Spike Lee.In the two thousand thirteen comedy Fading Gigolo, which he wrote and directed, he became a leading man.
## A career-best performance
Turturro's performance in The Only Living Pickpocket in New York is one of his finest and one of the best of the year.

> the performance he gives in The Only Living Pickpocket in New York is one of his finest, as well as one of the best of the year
## Key takeaway

John Turturro gives one of his finest performances as Harry Lehman, an aging pickpocket reckoning with his past while caring for his ailing wife in a New York that no longer values his skills.