Having fallen out of his social standing that once afforded him a Manhattan lifestyle, Harry (John Turturro) lives out his slower, retired years in the Bronx, tending to his ailing wife, Rosie (Karina Arroyave). He still hits the streets each day to bring in some meager earnings by lifting odds and ends from people who do not spare a retiree in a sea of 1.4 million people a second thought as he passes them by on the street or in the subway. By the time they realize that their watch or their phone has been lifted, Harry is out of sight and out of reach; that is, until, he lifts a gym bag from a classic car driven by Dylan (Will Price), a young hothead with connections that run far and wide across the city.

Writer/director Noah Segan delivers The Only Living Pickpocket in New York for Sony Pictures Classics, which acquired the 88-minute film in the midst of its winter festival circuit. Segan’s sophomore feature effort, the film is a stripped-back, poison-penned love letter to the city with all the trappings of the sophisticated grime that its 1970s ancestors similarly boasted. Had a central part of the film not revolved around a lifted digital wallet, Pickpocket could have easily been mistaken for some exhumed reels from the American New Wave vault.

Turturro plays Harry as a man of honor, one partaking in a career as old as the Bible, as widespread as the entire globe, making it as naturally prevalent as sickness, but unlike a virus, pickpockets, he posits, operate under a code of ethics, thereby making them next-to-noble essentials to any functioning city’s network. Funneling his lifted goods up to Ben (Steve Buscemi), a longtime friend and owner of a pawn shop, Harry is helping to seed the local economy by keeping money flowing through the little guy and out of the hands of corporate entities. Speaking of hands, Harry chooses to still sit on his while sharing a conversation with Detective Warren (Giancarlo Esposito) on the subway; a bygone tradition which Warren even offers to be lifted, but Harry, ever the traditionalist, continues to abide.

What makes Pickpocket so engaging is that it is not a simple Robin Hood story, nor a complete rage against the machine that comes off more out of touch and damaging to its cause than promoting it. Even though Harry does not use a cell phone and has little interest in cybercrime or cyber investments, Segan never allows him a moment to get up on his soapbox and lament the new age petty crime and online scams that flood the streets and inboxes today. Pickpocket makes a quick observation that cybercrime has grown exponentially, and the local precinct has relegated the street crime unit, which Warren leads, to some back corner of the building. The most ire shown towards this shift comes more from Ben, who refuses to update his Windows 98, tube monitor desktop because he refuses to pay for the privilege to give these tech companies even more of his money as individual licenses have all been turned into a subscription model; and honestly, good for him. There is a valid plot reason for this as clear as the day is long, but beyond a poignant-despite-its-heavy-lacquered line reading late in the film by Buscemi, this is not a film that spends much time punching down on the youth of today.

That is one of the biggest surprises in Pickpocket because Segan writes Price’s Dylan to be an absolute brat, and Price, to his credit, is all too happy to add an obnoxious quality to his performance. Because Segan’s script is nuanced and, while thin, the characters are still developed enough that they are not simple archetypes, Dylan is never really treated like a narrative punching bag as many of these battle of the ages films tend to teeter either one way or the other. Segan does not extend himself so much as to try and absolve Dylan or let us view him as a sympathetic character – and to be fair, he does not really address the morality play latent in the script at all, rather letting it play out in the fringes of his audiences’ own consciousnesses – but it is never making him out to be a villain simply because of his young age. He is the villain because of his actions, and likewise, Harry is just the latest in a long line of tragic heroes whose life is upended because of his actions.

There is a simplicity in Pickpocket that adds to the film’s charm. On one hand, it is just another New York story, but like each of the people who call the city their home, they all have a story in which they are the central figure. We do not spend a lot of time with Harry, but across the time we do spend – which, much of the third act plays out slightly faster than real time in a race against the clock – we learn enough to sympathize with him as he edges towards and accepts his eventual fate. Ending on a note of ambiguity, cinematographer Sam Levy offers a eulogy befitting a man who has lived a full life, yet did not know the world beyond the city limits; a city which is a world in and of itself. As the camera pans across the skyline, Segan’s closing note on his thesis lands with near-perfect impact. The city may be a concrete jungle, but on the streets, bustling between the understory of skyscrapers, the law of nature still applies: eat or be eaten.