Caught Stealing
Austin Butler proves his mettle as the collateral damage in Darren Aronofsky’s edgy, hard-hitting, deranged black comedy.
New York rhapsody: Zoë Kravitz and Austin Butler
Image courtesy of Sony Pictures.
Hank Thompson is just a regular guy who loves baseball and his mom, maybe drinks too much beer, has a close-knit coterie of friends at the local bar and a really hot girlfriend. What is about to happen to Hank, all because he said he would look after a neighbour’s cat, is more than unfair. As Hank’s world implodes and he ends up in hospital, various strata of 1990s New York – the cops, Russian mafia and a merciless pair of Hasidic Jews – conspire to make Hank’s life hell. And he doesn’t even like cats…
You can never tell with Darren Aronofsky. For an award-winning filmmaker with a number of notable hits under his belt (Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler, Black Swan, The Whale), he is still adventurous enough to keep his audience on its back foot. Here, he has unleashed an irreverent, punk, highly atmospheric and frequently shocking black comedy set in 1998. Not everybody has a cell phone yet (Hank doesn’t have one), the World Trade Center is prominently perched on the skyline and Barry Manilow is on the radio. Aronofsky is not interested in dragging in any political references of the time, he just seems to enjoy the prospect of making a period movie – before New York got all cleaned up, bohemian and gilt-edged.
At the core of all this is Austin Butler’s Everyman, a surfer dude trapped on the mean streets of the Lower East Side, still haunted by a childhood accident. He wanted to be a baseball star but a car crash put paid to that dream and now he’s chugging beer for breakfast in a nondescript New York apartment block. Austin Butler is the human heartbeat of the film, an actor not only easy on the eye but equally credible, gawky and funny with a soul the size of a baseball diamond. Were it not for Butler’s soul, Caught Stealing would not have worked, because we would not have cared for this misplaced, beautiful man. A strong supporting cast provides plenty of colour and the period backgrounds are a joy, completing the flavour of this unexpectedly compelling, brutal and enjoyable caper. Perhaps most surprising of all is that Aronofsky has given us a movie built from recognisable tropes but yet is still a startling original.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Austin Butler, Regina King, Zoë Kravitz, Matt Smith, Liev Schreiber, Vincent D'Onofrio, Benito Martínez Ocasio (aka Bad Bunny), Griffin Dunne, Carol Kane, Action Bronson, George Abud, D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Laura Dern and Tonic as Bud the Cat.
Dir Darren Aronofsky, Pro Jeremy Dawson, Dylan Goldeno, Ari Handel and Darren Aronofsky, Screenplay Charlie Huston, from his novel of the same name, Ph Matthew Libatique, Pro Des Mark Friedberg, Ed Andrew Weisblum, Music Rob Simonsen and Idles, Costumes Amy Westcott, Dialect coach Tim Monich.
Columbia Pictures/Protozoa Pictures-Sony Pictures.
106 mins. USA. 2025. UK and US Rel: 29 August 2025. Cert. 15.
