Caught Stealing Review

Darren Aronofsky directs his ninth film, moving to the crime-caper genre by adapting Charlie Huston’s novel Caught Stealing.

Hank Thompson (Austin Butler) is a bartender in late ‘90s New York. His simple life becomes complicated when his punk rocker neighbour, Russ (Matt Smith), has to rush back to London and asks the former baseball player to look after his cat. Russ’ sudden disappearance leads to multiple gangsters looking for the Brit, and Hank ends up sucked into the criminal underworld.

Aronofsky has made some great films during his career. Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan were masterpieces, and The Wrestler was an excellent indie drama. He has also made daring films like The Fountain, Noah, and mother!, which were divisive. His films have been popular with cinephiles. His flirtations with franchise films include an adaptation of Batman: Year One, linked to The Wolverine and a reboot of Robocop, which was on the shortlist to direct Man of Steel. Caught Stealing will be seen as one of his most mainstream films.

Caught Stealing was set in the late ‘90s, and it felt like a throwback to crime films from the ‘90s and noughties. It was a film about an ordinary man thrust into an extraordinary situation that involved colourful characters all wanting a Macguffin and converging towards the same point. It felt like something the Coen Brothers, Quentin Tarantino, or Guy Ritchie would have made. The film should appeal to Millennials and Gen Xers.

Sony has promoted Caught Stealing as a kinetic crime romp, and there was a lot of that in the film. There was a lot of fun to be had with the film. There were well-executed chase sequences and shootouts, a running gag where one of Hank’s neighbours is shouted at, and there’s a mishap with a machine gun. This was a film that featured two Hasidic Jewish brothers who were religiously observant and ruthless criminals. The final act will evoke flashbacks for gamers to Grand Theft Auto IV due to its setting and Eastern European influence. Sony followed the example set by Captain Marvel and A Quiet Place: Day One, and used the feline star for promotional purposes.

However, the film was more serious than advertised. Even the most humorous situations had an air of darkness to them, like when a man with a concussion was made to drive around New York. Hank was a broken character. He could have become a professional baseball player, but a car accident prevented those dreams. That incident affected Hank for the rest of his life, leading him to work in a bar, live in a crappy apartment with a dependency on alcohol. The only positives in his life were his daily calls with his mum and his relationship with Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz), a New York paramedic. Early in the film, Hank was beaten so badly that he had a kidney removed, which meant he had to give up alcohol. For someone who had major surgery, Hank could move and fight like Jason Bourne. Death was treated as a serious and weighty event. The criminals were willing to do an even more evil act: hurt a cat.

Caught Stealing fills a cinematic hole by showing there’s a place for more adult-oriented films. It was a fun crime film with a fair amount of pathos.