★★★ (3 out of 4)
I love me some John Turturro. And I don’t know anyone who actually does know about movies who wouldn’t agree with me. It’s not just that this acting giant—he’ll be 70 next year— hasn’t won an Oscar. It’s that he has never effing been nominated for one in his entire 40-year film career. That’s a total of zero in Oscar nominations. Not for “Quiz Show” or “Barton Fink” or “Do the Right Thing” or “The Big Lebowski”—not for anything. That’s a crime and it’s not a petty one.
Look, I am not saying Turturro deserves an Oscar just for being great for like forever. I haven’t known Turturro for that long, just long enough to know he wouldn’t want a gold watch kind of kiss-off. He deserves the real thing, the competitive kind.
And right now he has the vehicle. Not a supporting role, the category in which he made his name. This time it’s the star spot. He’s the whole damn screen-filling big kahuna in “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York.” Ever since this indie gem premiered at Sundance in January, people have been saying Turturro and Oscar in the same breath. What an irony that his main competition will probably be “Wild Horse Nine” star John Malkovich, another longtime Academy pass over. They acted together once in 1998’s “Rounders.” You should see this poker action-comedy. It’s an underrated treat.
The film soars by just letting the camera home in on the landscape of Turturro’s face, where each shift of expression tells a story all its own.
But back to Turturro. “Pickpocket” —I’m tired of typing the whole damn title—gives him the plum role of Harry Lehman, an aging analog pickpocket in a digital Big Apple. Wallets yield credit cards that can be canceled in seconds and smartphones have purely transitional value, leaving Harry struggling to support himself and care for his disabled wife, Rosie (Karina Arroyave, terrific).
When he mistakenly steals and sells a valuable USB stick belonging to Dylan (Will Price), the Gen Z heir to a crime family, recovering it becomes his life-or-death mission. Why should we care about a small-time crook like Harry? Turturro, in words and the space between them, shows you why. The role combines a street hustler’s survival instincts with a caregiver’s devotion. Harry’s predicament gives the crime story its core of relatable emotion. This thieving prince now occupies a city that’s outgrown him. In writer-director Noah Segan’s view, this is no country for old-school men.
“Pickpocket” gives Turturro a juicy chance to share scenes with several other indelible character actors. Steve Buscemi is reliably funny and touching as Ben, a pawnbroker who is Harry’s longtime fence. There is much humor watching these two confront modern technology in the form of Ben’s museum-ready computer. Plugging in Harry’s stolen USB stick only triggers their location and Harry’s doom. The invaluable Giancarlo Esposito, as a police detective whose earlier harassment of Harry has grown into a kind of affection, joins Turturro in giving us a lesson in unforced screen chemistry.
The film is studded with fine performances, from Tatiana Maslan as Harry’s estranged daughter to Jamie Lee Curtis as a most unlikely crime boss. But “Pickpocket” soars by just letting Sam Levy’s alert camera home in on the landscape of Turturro’s face where each shift of expression tells a story all its own. In one scene, he carries his incapacitated wife up the stairs and then sweeps her into an impromptu dance of genuine aching tenderness. In another, when his daughter lets loose on Harry for years of neglect, his guilt as an absent father doesn’t need words to suffuse the screen.
As a film, “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York” benefits enormously from actual location shooting across the city’s five boroughs, a rare occurrence in these cost-cutting days of computer trickery. But Turturro remains the film’s unflagging source of authenticity. He’s simply perfection. This is the kind of performance awards are made for. The envelope, please.