One cannot help wondering while watching “The Only Pickpocket in New York”, about the mind of any person who has been a professional pickpocket anywhere in the world. In order to be successful in stealing a watch, wallet or any number of other valuable possessions from another person, you have to practice for many hours in order to pull off taking the item without them noticing, and then quietly escaping. The next risk is, them noticing too soon that they were robbed as you are trying to sneak away and then being chased down and physically beaten or even shot.

Then, if you get away with the stolen items, fencing them while risking being arrested and years of jail time. You also realize while watching this film that people like this, have no feelings of empathy for their victims, possibly causing them great hardship, not to mention cancelling credit cards and getting a new drivers license.

The premise of this story is the pickpocket Harry (John Turturro), robbed a young man who is connected to the Mob, who then tracked down Harry with cameras that were lining the street at the time of the robbery.

Harry also is living with his wife who is incapacitated with unresponsive wakefulness syndrome, which is also known as a vegetative state and Harry is also estranged from this daughter Kelly (Tatiana Maslany) due to his many years of not living with the family and his criminal history.

One of the best parts of this very well-made movie is Harry’s traveling to many different locations in New York City, to several boroughs, trying to sell his stolen items and then going to the fence to try and get this one item “a USB Card” back. Harry visits his friend Ben (Steve Buscemi), who is a fence to sell the items he received from a victim who is connected to the mob and after this scene, Harry’s life is all about his desperate attempt to undo and repair the huge mistake he made. The many difference scenes of small shops of Harry traveling through the complex streets of New York City were impressive.

Harry also visits his friend in the police department, Detective Warren, played by Giancarlo Esposito, as we realize that these two have a long history, including the many times Warren has arrested Harry over the years.

At the end of this movie there is a highly unexpected appearance of Jamie Lee Curtis as the mob boss Moira, that for me did not seem to fit into the flow of this movie and was more of an attempt to be different, or to surprise the audience, rather than being consistent with the story.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this movie are extremely high 97%, with my rating of 90% and a big recommendation.