PLOT: A former baseball prodigy (Austin Butler) living in 1998 New York City finds himself in big trouble when the Russian mob comes to believe that his missing neighbor (Matt Smith) might have left him something that belongs to them—and that they’d kill to get back.
REVIEW: Caught Stealing is getting a lot of buzz for being director Darren Aronofsky’s most accessible film. While yes, it does feature him—for the first time—working in a straight genre, this being a thriller, it also has all the hallmarks you’d expect from one of his movies. Lest anyone forget this is an Aronofsky film, an early sequence in the movie, where Austin Butler’s character, Hank, suffers a particularly brutal beating, reminds you. Usually in an action thriller, the hero takes a licking and keeps on ticking without too many obvious wounds, but that ain’t Aronofsky’s style, with poor Hank coming away from the fight with permanent damage. So yeah, Caught Stealing is a lot of fun, but it’s also a tough movie that takes no prisoners.
In that way, it’s very much like a film made in the era it’s set in, 1998. This was a time when indie thrillers could be brutal without paying too much heed to the audience’s sensitivities. And, indeed, Caught Stealing gets brutal, with a few legitimately shocking moments peppered into the film that I honestly didn’t see coming. It apparently sticks pretty close to the crime novel of the same name that it’s based on, with the writer, Charlie Huston, also penning the screenplay.
It lends itself to a strong showcase for star Austin Butler, who’s showing a lot of promise and seems on the verge of becoming the next big leading man. His Hank Thompson is a solid hero, a former baseball prodigy who suffered a career-ending injury in high school and now works at a dive bar in NYC. Things aren’t all bad, though, as he’s got a gorgeous, adoring girlfriend (Zoë Kravitz’s Yvonne), while he’s generally well-liked by everyone in the neighborhood.
Of course, things soon turn upside down when his wannabe punk rocker neighbor, Matt Smith’s Russ, leaves him in charge of his cat (the feline has a legit starring role) but neglects to tell him about the various hoods he works for. Soon, Hank is caught between a gang of Russian mobsters led by a smooth-talking Puerto Rican (Bad Bunny), a cop (Regina King), and—perhaps most deadly of all—two Hasidic Jewish hit men (Liev Schreiber and Vincent D’Onofrio).
Hank is a terrific role for Butler, taking advantage of his lanky physicality (you believe him as a ballplayer), charisma, and vulnerability. It’s a tribute to both the movie and the performance that you’re really never sure if he’s going to make it to the closing credits. While ably supported—Kravitz as a convincing dream girl and King as a believable cop—it’s his movie through and through, proving he has a lot of range beyond the larger-than-life characters he’s played up to now.
Aronofsky clearly had fun making the movie and wants the audience to feel the same way, so he’s dropped the austere approach of his last few films (no arthouse 1.33:1 aspect ratio), giving this a slick, diamond-cut feel. He knows exactly how to make a movie like this, so when he plays in the thriller sandbox, you can be assured he’ll be making a damn good one.
With a top-notch cast, some hard-hitting violence, and even a few solid laughs, Caught Stealing is a pleasant late-summer surprise I hope doesn’t get lost at the multiplex. This is a retro thriller that feels like a lost movie from Sundance 1998— in the best possible way. They don’t really make ’em like this anymore but I sure wish they did.
