Darren Aronofsky is a filmmaker who's forged his career on big swings, like the mind-bending, black-and-white thriller Pi, the gnarly body-horror nightmare Black Swan, the biblical epic Noah, and the extravagant explosion of Christian mythology and general mayhem that was mother! So, it's genuinely shocking how tame Caught Stealing is. The New York-set crime comedy's biggest swing comes literally from a bat, wielded by a bland hero, played by an underwhelming leading man.
Austin Butler heads a star-studded cast that boasts Zoë Kravitz, Regina King, Matt Smith, Action Bronson, Liev Schreiber, Vincent D'Onofrio, Bad Bunny, Griffin Dunne, and Carol Kane. Everyone around him brings verve and character — there's a provocative paramedic, a tough-talking cop, snarling gangsters, a cat-loving punk, a beguiling barfly, and a good ol' fashioned Jewish granny. They build a vivid New York, familiar and fun. But at its center, Butler is a drop-jawed "nice small-town boy" who is the dull eye of their storm.
It's not even that Butler is the problem with Caught Stealing. He's more the biggest sign that Aronofsky is pulling his punches, and his fans should be worried.
What's Caught Stealing about?
Charlie Huston adapts his novel of the same name for the screenplay of Caught Stealing, which centers on Lower East Side bartender Hank Thompson (Butler), a California transplant who was poised to be a baseball star until a car collision shattered his knee and dreams. A decade on, he's nursing his wounds with booze and hook-ups with his paramedic girlfriend Yvonne (Kravitz), who matches his sex drive and night owl hours. However, their late night romance is interrupted when Hank's mohawked neighbor Russ (Smith) asks a favor — care for his cat while he jets back to London on a personal matter.
What should be an easy task turns abruptly disastrous as Russian thugs show up at Russ' door, eager to curb-stomp anybody who gets in their way. Seems Russ is in possession of something they want, as do a red-headed gunman (Bad Bunny), a smirking narc officer (Regina King), and a pair of debonair Hasidic gangsters known as "the Hebrews" (Liev Schreiber and Vincent D'Onofrio).
These tough guys don't play around, and to prove it, they're quick to beat the kidney out of Hank and even injure Russ' cat, Bud (Tonic). If Hank can't find this mysterious thing that's so hotly sought, not only his life, but those of his girlfriend, and his friends — like coke-sniffing bar owner Paul (Dunne) and his loudmouth bestie (Action Bronson) — are on the line as well.
Caught Stealing lacks panache, grit, or even appropriate New York weirdness.
1998 New York City is a rich terrain to relish exactly the kind of outrageousness and discomfortingly grossness that Aronofsky has typically embraced. Sure, there's some vomit, piss, and blood in the mix with piles of cat shit. Still, Caught Stealing somehow feels sanitized.
A problem is Butler's pretty-boy good looks, which feel too glossy for a guy who's been burying his dead dreams in the bottle for the last 11 years. Even when his model-good looks are peppered with prosthetic cuts and his abs striped with wounds and medical staples, Butler still looks so Hollywood hot that it's hard to take Hank's injuries as real. Butler doesn't have a New York movie face, and it hurts the movie.
Think Goodfellas, After Hours, The Linguini Incident, or Dog Day Afternoon. These are New York movies where people don't have pretty faces, they have mugs. They have good looks but also character. In Caught Stealing, even the kidney-kicking Russian muscle and drug-dealing punk have flawless skin, as if everyone has a sponsorship deal with a French moisturizer or health spa.
It's the wrong look for this kind of movie, not only because it favors a Hollywood ideal of beauty over the gruffer New York aesthetic, but also because this movie is about how "broken" Hank's world is. Yet, everyone is achingly beautiful! Even when they die, they die elegantly, their limbs bent as if posing for a tragic life-drawing class.
This superficial glossiness makes the stakes of the movie feel hollow. Hank doesn't feel like a real person, but an abstraction of a brokenhearted all-American boy, being brutalized by the big city he can never really call his home. It makes sense that he would stand out. But he should still be imbrued with this brokenness, instead of wearing it like a stylish accessory he can shed when he's tired of the trend.
Caught Stealing's supporting cast is what works.
The actors who ground Caught Stealing's New York are as follows: Carol Kane, Griffin Dunne, Action Bronson, Liev Schreiber, and Vincent D'Onofrio. The latter two swagger in their Hasidic attire, their beards and hats a confident extension of their faith and machismo. Kane, who has been an identifier of New York authenticity in everything from Scrooged to Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, is almost unrecognizable, as her signature curls are conservatively covered by a precise hair scarf. But as she welcomes in a bewildered Hank to her table — for matzo ball soup — Caught Stealing finds an easy authenticity for a spell.
Where Kane represents the warm domesticity the city can offer, Dunne and Bronson showcase its seedier side, the former covered in grizzled facial hair, tattoos, and a grumbling tone to match. He gives mug, and it's glorious. The latter has the pugnacious attitude of a local who'll take no shit. These character actor looks and performances give a glimpse of a version of this movie that could have been exhilarating. Instead, Caught Stealing cruises on good looks and competent but unremarkable storytelling.
I'd hoped for Aronofsky's version of After Hours, a comedy that unabashedly showcases the virtues and vices of New York City with appreciation and self-awareness for its depravity. But Caught Stealing is far too mild for that.
Perhaps this timidness is intentional. Maybe Aronofsky commits fully to the perspective of an outsider, who all these years in still looks at New York as a place he's crashing, not living. So rather than New York feeling lived in, it's more like Hank is still floating above it.
Or maybe the mixed receptions from critics on The Whale and mother! have Aronofsky thinking he should play it safe, because Caught Stealing is safe. Outside of a sex scene that offers some brief nudity and a shot of two men doing lines of coke, this film could easily play on TV or an airplane. It's the kind of movie you might find on a cable station and watch half-heartedly while folding laundry or doomscrolling. It's not the kind of grab-you-by-the throat cinema that Aronofsky has made for better or worse since 1998's Pi.
Watching this unfurl in a theater, I realized that if Caught Stealing were just a Hollywood action-comedy with pretty stars, a New York setting, and a twisting, but not really all that surprising plotline, it'd be fine. I'd write a mixed review suggesting to keep your expectations mid, and you won't be disappointed. But this is an Aronofsky film. We should expect more.
I've loved some of his movies and hated others, but they all made me feel something. I never doubted Aronofsky's ability to create thought-provoking, heart-wrenching, stomach-churning cinema… until now.
