Fresh off directing Brendan Fraser’s Oscar winning comeback role in 2022’s The Whale, director Darren Aronofsky returns to theaters with a throwback crime thriller. In Caught Stealing, Hank (Austin Butler) is a baseball obsessed California boy now working as a bartender in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1998. One day, his punk-rock neighbor Russ (Matt Smith) asks him to take care of his cat for a few days while he visits his sick father back home in London. When some Russian gangsters come looking for Russ, Hank suddenly finds himself caught in the middle of a search for something that may cost him his life.
Undoubtedly, the strength of this film lies in its story tracking the mystery of what Hank has gotten himself involved in and just how entangled and deep he gradually becomes in the criminal underworld. The saga of just what the criminals are after unfolds at a deliberate pace, just enough to keep things interesting and the audience engaged. Watching Hank unravel what’s going on includes a good dose of action, emotion, and humorous beats that combine to make an enjoyable crime thriller. The action is interspersed well within the story providing a good balance that mostly avoids any lulls, save for some moments in the second act where things can slow down a bit.
The characters themselves are a highlight as the star-studded cast elevates what they’re given to heighten the personalities of archetypes that could’ve easily drifted into parody. Butler is a capable lead, believable as a former baseball prodigy suffering from guilt, good at heart but caught between his own demons and the New York underworld. Bad Bunny, credited under his real name of Benito Martinez Ocasio, performs capably and believably as the gangster Colorado, providing the right amount of menace the role calls for. Liev Schreiber and Vincent D’Onofrio are hilarious as two devout but dangerous Hasidic Jews Lipa and Shmully who will kill you while observing Shabbat. Their banter and chemistry adds levity to characters that could’ve easily just been two cardboard hitmen. Speaking of which, within a pretty stacked cast, Nikita Kukushkin manages to stand out the most as the hilarious Russian goon Pavel. He’s at once ultra-violent and funny as he employs various American phrases he’s learned into his vernacular all the while being menacing. He nearly steals every scene he’s in, no small feat considering who he shares the screen with. 1990s New York City is also itself a major character in the movie, complete with numerous shots of the World Trade Center towers looming in the background as Hank and the rest of the characters traverse Manhattan. Caught Stealing is a time capsule transporting viewers to the old NYC just before gentrification fully set in and the artists, grime, and shady characters had yet to be replaced with Sex and the City fans and midwestern college graduates. It adds to the overall 90s feel of not just the backdrop, but of the movie itself, a throwback to simple, entertaining mid-budget thrillers that hardly get made anymore.
Caught Stealing falls flat however with its emotional character beats for Hank, failing to connect for the most part. As mentioned, Hank is battling the ghosts of mistakes past, burying his feelings of guilt at the bottom of liquor and beer bottles and punishing himself for how his decisions hurt others and derailed his promising baseball career. We’re meant to observe a man being forced to confront these feelings after being thrust into a fight for his life that puts those he cares for in danger, but his inner conflict is presented in a surface level way that doesn’t engender much investment in seeing him overcome his demons. The movie presents them to us so we’re aware they exist, but doesn’t go deeper in a way that evokes empathy or caring beyond just informing audiences of the protagonist’s psyche. Now, this probably wasn’t the goal of a film where the thrills, twists, and action of a chase is supposed to be at the forefront, and is done well here, but if the idea is to be introduced, you would hope Aronofsky would go all the way through with it.
Despite this, Caught Stealing achieves what it sets out to do as a throwback crime thriller featuring a pretty decent mystery, a cast of entertaining characters, and some cold action sequences all encased in a love letter to 1990s NYC. The supporting cast is a strong one with a handful of eccentric characters that provide laughs and a fair amount of thrills with Austin Butler grounding the main story as the protagonist. If you miss tightly written, Friday night Blockbuster video fare, this is one worth giving a shot.
Image: Columbia Pictures
