Caught Stealing takes things down a fun, if somewhat conventional route.
Spoilers ahead, you’ve been warned.
There’s a lot to love about Darren Aronofsky movies, whether it’s the dark psychology stuff (see Black Swan and Requiem for a Dream) or deep character dramas (see The Wrestler and The Whale). They’re also not what you would call easy viewings. If you’re able to rewatch Requiem, then you’re made of sterner stuff than me because my hand is always going to inch towards the Pixars or the Wes Andersons than an Aronofsky movie.
But Caught Stealing though? Aronofsky has slid into a zone where I didn’t think he ever would: conventional.
This is a slick crime caper that could’ve easily been lifted from the 90s (fitting given its 1998 setting) and is a classic tale of “wrong place, wrong time” involving violent criminals. Given how polarising Aronofsky’s previous two films were (the Jennifer Lawrence-led Mother! and the melodramatic Brendan Fraser drama The Whale), it’s almost like he made Caught Stealing as a way to reassure himself and us that he’s still good at what he does.
Hank Thompson (Austin Butler) was a star baseball prospect in high school, only for a car crash to end his promising career. These days he tends bar on the Lower East Side, drinks way too much, has hot sex with his much-too-understanding and caring girlfriend Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz, who deserves way better because Yvonne exists only to serve the plot and Hank’s arc), and has recurring nightmares of his career-ending car crash. This is basic ‘traumatised main character’ stuff combined with a large dash of ‘pathetic’, but Butler sells because he’s so damn charismatic and makes Hank much more capable than he reads on the page. Plus he can play drunk as well as the best of them.
Hank’s neighbour and a very unsubtle caricature of a British Punk, Russ (Matt Smith, just chewing scenery every second he’s onscreen), needs to hot foot it back to London (his dad had a stroke, aight?), and leaves his cat in the hands of Hank. As one might expect, Russ is caught up in some deep shit with some bad people, such as a bunch of Russian gangsters led by Colorado (Bad Bunny) and a pair of violent Hasidic brothers Lipa and Shmully Drucker (Liev Schreiber and Vincent D’Onofrio respectively, both just having a blast). Despite getting the cops and Detective Roman (Regina King) involved, they’re no help and Hank is basically forced to get himself out of this clusterfuck of a mess.
Now normally we’d probably expect Aronofsky to really dive into Hank’s whole car crash trauma, the subsequent guilt, and all the drinking that’s manifested as a consequence. But aside from several lingering shots of booze bottles and the repeated motif of Hank waking up from his nightmare, that’s as deep as it gets. It’s almost like Aronofsky wants to go into Hank’s psyche, but is purposely restraining himself and focusing on the plot.
All the characters are quite thinly conceived and it’s only the great performances from the whole cast (especially Butler and Kravitz) that makes Caught Stealing feel like it’s trying to say something interesting. But once you think about it, you quickly realise it’s not getting any further than “are these people for real or are they just fucking with us?”
But in the moments I turn that side of my brain off and just take Caught Stealing at face value, I had an absolute blast of a time because, well, this is a slick crime caper made by one of our best auteurs working today.
Screenwriter Charlie Huston’s script, adapted from his own 2004 novel of the same name, keeps motoring along and its unexpectedly economic 107 minute runtime just flies by. Taking the visceral visual style used in The Wrestler and Black Swan, Aronofsky filters it through a potent cocktail of Elmore Leonard and 90s Quentin Tarantino. There’s are flashes of slapstick humour and genuine humanity mixed in with several violent action scenes in a very “I can’t watch, yet I must keep looking” kind of way. It’s all chaos, not unlike the situation Hank finds himself in, and it’s all thoroughly entertaining.
Caught Stealing is quite unlike Aronofsky’s previous films because the vibe is just so different, but there are enough of his visual flourishes that are unmistakenly Aronofsky-esque. If this is Aronofsky’s take on a fun movie, then please give us more movies like Caught Stealing. As great as the heavy character drama stuff is, it’s nice to break things up with an enjoyable romp that you can turn your brain off (relatively speaking).