In Review: ‘The Only Living Pickpocket in New York,’ ‘A Talent for Murder’

(Programming note: This is the second of three installments looking at a week stuffed with new releases. Earlier today we published reviews of Wildwood and Clayface. Tomorrow we'll be running reviews of Possible Love, Wicker, and Fatherland.)

The Only Living Pickpocket in New York
Dir. Noah Segan
88 min. 

During a long, suspenseful stretch of The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, Harry Lehman (John Turturro) has the urgent need to make phone calls and get directions. Never in human history has either of those tasks been easier to accomplish than now, when a single device can ping off a network of satellites and cell towers and instantly connect you to whoever you’d like or guide you precisely where you want to go. But Harry has reached the age where you generally are who you are, and the technologies of the younger generation feel more estranging than useful, “improvements” on a world that felt better when humans were entirely out of network. Now Harry is dropping coins into the handful of pay phones in the city that aren’t busted and estimating a fair gratuity for a panhandler to point him to the right street. (65 cents is too low.) When he instinctively separates a young woman from a locked smart phone on the bus, he winds up casually whipping it in the bushes. Kids today, you know? 

Writer-director Noah Segan has crafted a New York crime thriller that exalts Harry’s old-school values while spinning it into gentle comedy, as its hero stubbornly contends with a world that’s passed him by. While Harry’s illicit profession has long been understood as a form of artistry in movies, Segan treats his compulsive thievery as if it’s been grandfathered into the legal system, a good outlet for elderly hoods still needing to scrounge up rent. In fact, one of his closest friends is a detective (Giancarlo Esposito) who’s gotten to know him over the years. There’s an air of nostalgia to The Only Living Pickpocket in New York that tips too far into sentimentality at times, but Segan’s affection for the city’s past and the beloved character actors who embody it proves to be irresistible. 

Before the plot kicks in, Segan takes a little time getting into Harry’s daily routine, which is like watching a lion on the savanna, hiding in the brush and waiting for the opportunity to pounce. After boosting his fill of wallets, watches and gadgets, he heads over to the local pawn shop, haggles with his fence Ben (Steve Buscemi) and comes away with the cash he needs to cover expenses and care for his severely disabled wife. His luck changes dramatically, however, when he rips off Dylan (Will Price), a preening young dimwit with mob connections who happened to be carrying a tech gizmo of immense worth. Harry lacks the computer savvy to understand its value and fences it by bulk with other gadgets, but Dylan finds him and threatens a deadly consequence if he can’t track it down by day’s end. 

While there’s a built-in urgency to Harry locating this needle in a haystack, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York isn’t Run Lola Run. He’s the patient, methodical operator he’s always been, and, if anything, the mortal danger slows him down and gives him a chance to take stock of his life. Segan takes time to appreciate the various tricks of his trade while allowing Turturro himself to set the tone, playing Harry as something like an older version of the “grinder” that haunted the casinos and underground poker clubs of Rounders. It’s an affecting victory lap of sorts for Turturro, Buscemi, and Esposito, who all bring their rich histories to the table, and a lament for a New York that’s slipped into obsolescence. When it’s over, you may want to chuck your phone into the East River. — Scott Tobias

The Only Living Pickpocket opens in limited release this week before expanding.

A Talent for Murder
Dir. Anton Corbijn
105 min.

Edward Ridgeway (Alden Ehrenreich) has one job but it’s not an easy one. A low-level editor for a New York publisher, he’s been dispatched to Switzerland in an attempt to coax a reclusive author into penning a sixth book in a successful series. That might not sound that challenging were it not for a few details: the series is the Tom Ripley novels, the author is Patricia Highsmith (Helen Mirren), and the last guy who made this attempt has fallen off the grid. Further complicating matters, it’s 1995. That’s the year the real-life Highsmith died at the age of 74 and this fictional version seems to understand that she’s also arrived at a point where she has nothing left to lose.

A Talent for Murder adapts Joanna Murray-Smith’s 2014 play Switzerland and it’s never better than in a first half that sinks into the claustrophobic atmosphere of Highsmith’s remote home, a retreat tailored specifically to the writer’s tastes, with an emphasis on murder weapons and snails. A battle of will commences with Ridgeway’s arrival and it seems at first as if he’s horrendously outmatched by the famously misanthropic writer. He first has to win the right to be admitted, then to stick around, but he ultimately proves useful as a sounding board. Or maybe as a source of inspiration. Ridgeway looks modest and unthreatening, but he knows Highsmith’s nasty body of work inside out and it seems to resonate with him on a deeper level. As they plot out a new Ripley installment, it’s Ridgeway who plays the part in scenes dramatizing the story. And perhaps he’s playing the part elsewhere, too, as evidenced by some adventures outside Highsmith’s home involving a woman named Clementine (Olivia Cooke) who, shades of another Highsmith creation, he meets on a train as a stranger.

Directed by Anton Corbijn, A Talent for Murder begins as a taut, funny two-hander in which Mirren plays the confident cat to Ehrenreich’s surprisingly resourceful mouse. Mirren’s ideally cast as Highsmith, whom she plays as nasty, witty, and maybe a touch more vulnerable than she lets on. Continuing his comeback, Ehrenreich’s quite good, too. It’s the structure of the film that gets it in trouble. After a point, Highsmith starts to recede into the background and the film begins to resemble a solid-enough Ripley pastiche. It’s engaging, but as Highsmith would be the first to tell anyone (possibly with a weapon in hand), Ripley has only one true author who understands every twist of his murderous mind. —Keith Phipps

A Talent for Murder opens in limited release this week.