Caught Stealing comes to us from director Darren Aronofsky and writer/producer Charlie Huston, adapting his own novel. Quite a lofty pedigree — and such a remarkable cast, more on them later — for what appears to be a darkly comical crime thriller. What have we got here? Only one way to find out.
We lay our scene in the lower east side of NYC, circa 1998. Austin Butler stars as Hank Thompson, once a prominent up-and-coming baseball player whose career was prematurely ended by a drunken car accident (to be clear, he was the driving drunkard). The incident naturally left him with a phobia of driving, hence the move to New York City. Some time later, he’s working as a bartender and still rooting for the Giants of his hometown in San Francisco. Oh, and he’s dating a paramedic, name of Yvonne (Zoe Kravitz).
The plot kicks off when Hank’s neighbor (Russ, played by Matt Smith) skips town to visit his dying father back in London. Thus Hank and Yvonne are left to look after Russ’ cat, who proceeds to steal the whole damn movie. Alas, it turns out that Russ has gotten himself implicated in some kind of vague criminal dealings involving a huge amount of money.
The upshot is that Hank is now caught in between Russian mobsters (played by Yuri Kolokolnikov and Nikita Kukushkin), a Puerto Rican gangster (played by Benito Martinez Ocasio), a couple of Hebrew hitmen (played by Liev Schreiber and Vincent D’Onofrio, with Carol freaking Kane making a brief appearance as their mother), and of course the NYPD (Detective Roman, played by Regina King). And they’re all convinced Hank has something he doesn’t. So now our protagonist has to piece everything together and figure out how to outsmart everyone else around him. And we’re off to the races.
With all of that established, what role does Yvonne play in all this? Well, to put this as bluntly and spoiler-free as I can… she gets fridged. She is only there to be a victim of cruelty and it’s only for the purpose of further motivating our male protagonist. Such a damn shameful waste of Kravitz’ charisma and sex appeal.
Though to be entirely fair, I suppose I should point out that pretty much everyone in this movie gets killed off at one point or another. It’s a freaking bloodbath. Hell, there are some characters who get hyped up as big legitimate threats only to get dropped with pathetic ease later on.
I’m sorry to say that the antagonists in this picture are all woefully one-dimensional and straightforward, and their racial gimmicks are more or less the only thing to distinguish them. It does the central mystery no favors when the film is loaded with such a sprawling and colorful cast of characters, yet the only one who’s consistently interesting (aside from the aforementioned and wasted Yvonne) is Hank.
With crime thrillers, it’s a common trope that the protagonist has to transgress in some way. That’s a problem here, as Hank did nothing more criminal or reprehensible than agree to look after a neighbor’s cat. Throughout the plot, this poor guy gets tortured, his home and workplace torn apart, everyone he ever loved gets threatened or worse, and his entire life is completely destroyed over shit he had no knowledge of or control over. It makes for a deeply unpleasant and even sadistic film to sit through at times.
Thus the filmmakers try to bring in another angle, by way of recurring PTSD flashbacks to the drunken accident that ended his baseball career. Yes, that was unquestionably his fault. Yes, the film clearly shows that even despite his chronic guilt and against all doctors’ orders, he remains a full-blown alcoholic.
The problem is that against genre conventions and basic storytelling common sense, the filmmakers are trying to explore themes of guilt and redemption through a side plot that has nothing whatsoever to do with the main plot. His car accident and his alcohol abuse have fuck-all to do with the situation Hank is presently in, and all attempts at tying the two together are pitifully weak. No matter how many times the film tries to tell me that Hank deserves all this shit because he drove drunk and crashed a car several years ago on the other end of the country, I’m not buying it. End result: the themes don’t work. It does lead to an awesome pay-off at the climax, though.
Oh, and speaking of redundant side plots, there’s a running storyline about Hank following the San Francisco Giants and their uphill campaign for a wild card spot in the playoffs. (FYI, the Giants just barely missed a playoff spot that year.) The storyline serves effectively no purpose, except as a bonding topic of conversation between Hank and his mother. Hank has a strong loving relationship with his mom, which goes a long way to humanizing the character and keeping him sympathetic. I might add that his mother does eventually show up in a mid-credits cameo that I don’t dare spoil any further, that was fun.
As hollow as the movie is, it gets by on an abundance of charm. Even with one-note characters, these actors are all talented and entertaining enough to swing for the fences and deliver something fun to watch. I might further add that for all my issues with the plot and premise, it was honestly compelling to see how Hank gets outmaneuvered by the other characters, and all the times he finds new ways to outmaneuver everyone else in turn.
Caught Stealing is an unfortunate victim of its own pedigree. The film was heavily made and marketed on the name of Darren Aronofsky — who famously made Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan, The Wrestler, The Fountain, Mother!, The Whale, etc. — and so audiences were led to believe this would be another groundbreaking work of mind-blowing cinema. That’s not what we got. What we got was a fun and disposable little crime thriller romp made by an absurdly overqualified cast and crew. Sure, that’s better than a movie from underqualified filmmakers, but that doesn’t mean this film should be mistaken for an innovative all-timer, much less an awards contender. Moreover, it’s hard to shake the feeling that so much talent could have and should have made something smarter, better plotted, and more insightful than this.
I can give this one a recommendation, but with heavily adjusted expectations. Home video might be the way to go with this one.