Quick hands, big heart: John Turturro delivers an Oscar-worthy performance in The Only Living Pickpocket in New York

Some actors can make you forget you’re watching a performance — and John Turturro is one of them. In The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, he plays Harry, a man who steals for a living. Set against the unromantic, lived-in streets of New York City, this quiet drama earns its place not through ambition or scale but through the sheer force of one extraordinary performance.Harry is an aging pickpocket who has spent his life working the crowds of the metropolis. His trade is a dying art, and he knows it. But the film isn’t really about the thrill of the lift. It’s about the man behind the quick hands. Turturro plays him as a gentle, weary soul with a deep reserve of decency. You never feel that the film is excusing what Harry does. Instead, it lets you see him as a whole person, with flaws and tenderness side by side. Nowhere is that clearer than in his scenes at home, where he cares for his disabled wife with a patience and devotion that’s quietly moving.

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