The Only Living Pickpocket in New York

My nephew and I were both really looking forward to The Only Living Pickpocket in New York so we braved the large crowd at the Broadway for The Rocky Horror Picture Show to see it there last night.  It is an intriguing character study with a career best performance from John Turturro.  Harry Lehman (Turturro) is an old-school pickpocket in a city that has moved on without him.  His usual tricks no longer provide enough for him to care for his disabled wife Rosie (Karina Arroyave) so he breaks into a vintage car and steals a duffel bag filled with cash and a USB.  He takes the USB to his old friend Ben (Steve Buscemi) who owns a pawn shop and acts as his fence but he doesn't know what it is and sends him to Frank (Kelvin Han Yee), another fence who specializes in electronics, who eventually buys it.  Unbeknownst to Harry, the owner of the car is Dylan (Will Price), the scion of a powerful crime family, and the USB is a crypto wallet that he is is desperate to get back.  Dylan locates Harry using footage from street cameras and threatens Rosie to motivate him to return it.  He races against time across the boroughs of New York, calling on his old friend Detective Allan Warren (Giancarlo Espinoza), Frank's grandson Ernie (Michael Hsu Rosen), his estranged daughter Kelly (Tatiana Maslany), a young pickpocket and possible protege (Mark Cayne), and Ben's daughter Eve (Victoria Moroles), before showing Dylan's grandmother Moira (Jamie Lee Curtis), the crime boss, that an old dog still has a few new tricks.  I really liked the juxtaposition between the different generations because, even though the young characters have a greater fluency with technology, they still benefit from the wisdom of the older and more experienced characters (and vice versa).  I also liked gritty portrayal of New York (this reminded me of the crime dramas of the 1970s with the production design, the natural lighting, the use of grainy film effects in the cinematography, and even the retro score) as a repudiation of the soulless gentrification of the city.  Harry is an interesting character because, even though he is extremely flawed, he evokes sympathy with how he cares for the people in his life and Turturro embodies all of these contradictions with subtle changes in expression (there are so many close-ups of his world-weary face), especially in scenes that show his growing desperation, his tender care of his wife, and his heartbreaking encounter with his daughter.  It is a powerful, yet restrained, performance and the rest of the cast is also outstanding.  I really enjoyed this and highly recommend it.