Darren Aronofsky is a filmmaker who’s solid his profession on large swings, just 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 basic mayhem that was mom! So, it is genuinely surprising how tame Caught Stealing is. The New York-set crime comedy’s largest swing comes actually from a bat, wielded by a bland hero, performed by an underwhelming main man.
Austin Butler heads a star-studded forged that boasts Zoë Kravitz, Regina King, Matt Smith, Motion Bronson, Liev Schreiber, Vincent D’Onofrio, Unhealthy Bunny, Griffin Dunne, and Carol Kane. Everybody round him brings verve and character — there is a provocative paramedic, a tough-talking cop, snarling gangsters, a cat-loving punk, a beguiling barfly, and a great ol’ usual Jewish granny. They construct a vivid New York, acquainted and enjoyable. However at its heart, Butler is a drop-jawed “nice small-town boy” who’s the boring eye of their storm.
It is not even that Butler is the issue with Caught Stealing. He is extra the largest signal that Aronofsky is pulling his punches, and his followers must be frightened.
What’s Caught Stealing about?
Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz) and Hank (Austin Butler) join again at Hank’s condo in “Caught Stealing.”
Credit score: Niko Tavernise / Sony Footage
Charlie Huston adapts his novel of the identical identify for the screenplay of Caught Stealing, which facilities on Decrease East Aspect bartender Hank Thompson (Butler), a California transplant who was poised to be a baseball star till a automotive collision shattered his knee and desires. A decade on, he is nursing his wounds with booze and hook-ups along with his paramedic girlfriend Yvonne (Kravitz), who matches his intercourse drive and night time owl hours. Nevertheless, their late night time romance is interrupted when Hank’s mohawked neighbor Russ (Smith) asks a favor — look after his cat whereas he jets again to London on a private matter.
What must be a simple activity turns abruptly disastrous as Russian thugs present up at Russ’ door, desperate to curb-stomp anyone who will get of their method. Appears Russ is in possession of one thing they need, as do a red-headed gunman (Unhealthy Bunny), a smirking narc officer (Regina King), and a pair of debonair Hasidic gangsters generally known as “the Hebrews” (Liev Schreiber and Vincent D’Onofrio).
These powerful guys do not mess around, and to show it, they’re fast to beat the kidney out of Hank and even injure Russ’ cat, Bud (Tonic). If Hank cannot discover this mysterious factor that is so hotly sought, not solely his life, however these of his girlfriend, and his buddies — like coke-sniffing bar proprietor Paul (Dunne) and his loudmouth bestie (Motion Bronson) — are on the road as effectively.
Caught Stealing lacks panache, grit, and even applicable New York weirdness.
Russ (Matt Smith) and Hank (Austin Butler) on the transfer in “Caught Stealing.”
Credit score: Niko Tavernise / Sony Footage
1998 New York Metropolis is a wealthy terrain to relish precisely the form of outrageousness and discomfortingly grossness that Aronofsky has sometimes embraced. Positive, there’s some vomit, piss, and blood within the combine with piles of cat shit. Nonetheless, Caught Stealing in some way feels sanitized.
An issue is Butler’s pretty-boy beauty, which really feel too shiny for a man who’s been burying his lifeless desires within the bottle for the final 11 years. Even when his model-good appears to be like are peppered with prosthetic cuts and his abs striped with wounds and medical staples, Butler nonetheless appears to be like so Hollywood sizzling that it is onerous to take Hank’s accidents as actual. Butler does not have a New York film face, and it hurts the film.
Mashable Prime Tales
Suppose Goodfellas, After Hours, The Linguini Incident, or Canine Day Afternoon. These are New York films the place folks do not have fairly faces, they’ve mugs. They’ve beauty but additionally character. In Caught Stealing, even the kidney-kicking Russian muscle and drug-dealing punk have flawless pores and skin, as if everybody has a sponsorship cope with a French moisturizer or well being spa.
It is the mistaken search for this type of film, not solely as a result of it favors a Hollywood preferrred of magnificence over the gruffer New York aesthetic, but additionally as a result of this film is about how “broken” Hank’s world is. But, everyone seems to be achingly stunning! Even after 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 film really feel hole. Hank does not really feel like an actual particular person, however an abstraction of a brokenhearted all-American boy, being brutalized by the large metropolis he can by no means actually name his dwelling. It is smart that he would stand out. However he ought to nonetheless be imbrued with this brokenness, as a substitute of sporting it like a classy accent he can shed when he is uninterested in the development.
Caught Stealing‘s supporting forged is what works.
Hank (Austin Butler, heart) works with Lipa (Liev Schreiber, left), and Shmully (Vincent D’Onofrio, proper) to search out the hidden cash in “Caught Stealing.”
Credit score: Niko Tavernise / Sony Footage
The actors who floor Caught Stealing‘s New York are as follows: Carol Kane, Griffin Dunne, Motion Bronson, Liev Schreiber, and Vincent D’Onofrio. The latter two swagger of their Hasidic apparel, their beards and hats a assured extension of their religion and machismo. Kane, who has been an identifier of New York authenticity in all the pieces from Scrooged to Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, is sort of unrecognizable, as her signature curls are conservatively lined by a exact hair scarf. However as she welcomes in a bewildered Hank to her desk — for matzo ball soup — Caught Stealing finds a simple authenticity for a spell.
The place Kane represents the nice and cozy domesticity town can provide, Dunne and Bronson showcase its seedier aspect, the previous lined in grizzled facial hair, tattoos, and a grumbling tone to match. He provides mug, and it is superb. The latter has the pugnacious angle of an area who’ll take no shit. These character actor appears to be like and performances give a glimpse of a model of this film that might have been exhilarating. As a substitute, Caught Stealing cruises on beauty and competent however unremarkable storytelling.
I might hoped for Aronofsky’s model of After Hours, a comedy that unabashedly showcases the virtues and vices of New York Metropolis with appreciation and self-awareness for its depravity. However Caught Stealing is much too delicate for that.
Maybe this timidness is intentional. Perhaps Aronofsky commits absolutely to the angle of an outsider, who all these years in nonetheless appears to be like at New York as a spot he is crashing, not residing. So fairly than New York feeling lived in, it is extra like Hank continues to be floating above it.
Or perhaps the combined receptions from critics on The Whale and mom! have Aronofsky pondering he ought to play it protected, as a result of Caught Stealing is protected. Outdoors of a intercourse scene that gives some transient nudity and a shot of two males doing strains of coke, this movie might simply play on TV or an airplane. It is the form of film you would possibly discover on a cable station and watch half-heartedly whereas folding laundry or doomscrolling. It is not the form of grab-you-by-the throat cinema that Aronofsky has made for higher or worse since 1998’s Pi.
Watching this unfurl in a theater, I spotted that if Caught Stealing have been only a Hollywood action-comedy with fairly stars, a New York setting, and a twisting, however probably not all that shocking plotline, it would be superb. I might write a combined evaluation suggesting to maintain your expectations mid, and you will not be disenchanted. However that is an Aronofsky movie. We should always count on extra.
I’ve liked a few of his films and hated others, however all of them made me really feel one thing. I by no means doubted Aronofsky’s skill to create thought-provoking, heart-wrenching, stomach-churning cinema… till now.
Caught Stealing opens in theaters on Aug. 29.
