Writer/director Noah Segan’s gritty and affable “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York” is a character study of both a person and a place. The person at the center — our pickpocket, Harry (John Turturro) — is of a type that seems like an endangered species; he’s also the kind of person who’s indelible to the place that he inhabits: he is of New York City, and he also makes New York City what it is, and yet, it seems like his time is rapidly running out. What will New York be without its only living pickpocket?

The title is a bit of a cheeky misnomer. Of course Harry’s not the only living pickpocket in New York, but it seems like he could be. He’s plied his trade for decades, evidenced by his longtime relationship with a local detective (Giancarlo Esposito) who is more friend than adversary, and they’re two of a dying breed, a symbiotic pair, who need each other more than they need to be enemies.

Harry conducts his business in the streets and on the subway, standing cheek-to-cheek with the bankers whose wallets and watches he lifts (including John Gallagher Jr.), his only tool a trusty newspaper. But in an increasingly digital world, print media is dying, and so is the art of pickpocketing. Cellphones can be tracked, credit cards can be canceled. No one carries cash, which is king for Harry, who gets around the world greasing palms with dollar bills, including the nurses and neighbors who help him care for his gravely ill and disabled wife, Rosie (Karina Arroyave). But in this world, money isn’t always tangible anymore, it’s fungible.

At least that’s how it’s described by Harry’s latest target, a bratty, wealthy New Jersey kid named Dylan (Will Price). Harry clocks his 1969 vintage ride, easily broken into with a penny, but it turns out that Dylan’s “connected,” in the Mafia way, and when Harry accidentally makes off with a cryptocurrency wallet on a USB card, he ends up with far more trouble than he expected for a few hundred bucks.

Segan captures Harry’s constant movement through the city behind and through cars: subways and automotive. Cinematographer Sam Levy utilizes fleet digital cameras for this on-the-street swiftness, but the look has a warmth and graininess that lends it the air of a 1970s crime picture, especially with a soul-inspired score by Gary Lionelli, and classic New York songs on the soundtrack from across the decades (LCD Soundsystem to disco to jazz). That retro approach extends to the cast as well. Segan’s film is a vehicle for Turturro’s terrific performance, and he surrounds him with believable New York types of a certain era, like Esposito, Steve Buscemi as his buddy at the pawn shop, and Kelvin Han Yee as a Chinatown fence. Price is great as the cute but scary Gen Z antagonist.

What Harry faces down over the course of his stressful day with Dylan is his own “planned obsolescence.” The world is closing in on Harry, who can’t sustain this life of petty crime into retirement with a sick wife and the materiality of reality evolving so quickly. But Segan imagines a tale where old-school street smarts just might outwit the all-seeing eye of the digital panopticon. As Harry travels from the Bronx to Chinatown to Sheepshead Bay to Queens and back, trying to retrieve Dylan’s wallet, Segan lets us in on Harry’s game, which is based in relationships, skill and cunning. These are real-world tricks that prove the old hustler still has it — he never lost it, for better or for worse.

Maybe humanity has a fighting chance, as Segan suggests. Maybe Harry still has some wisdom to impart, some amends to make, some loose ends to tie up, even if his time is winding down. There will still be pickpockets in New York — and cops and gangsters and lives that are real and warm and grounded in that place. “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York” is a loving tribute to guys like Harry, living on the edge, plying their craft, honed through years of practice, as reliable as a vintage Rolex.

The film itself, too, is a tribute to the “they don’t make them like they used to” genre of indie dramas from the 1970s or 1990s. With “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York,” Segan defies the notion of “planned obsolescence.” Sometimes the old ways are the good ways, and this is a film that embodies that idea, through and through.

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'THE ONLY LIVING PICKPOCKET IN NEW YORK'

3 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for language)

Running time: 1:28

How to watch: In theaters nationwide Oct. 30

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