Austin Butler leads a cracking cast as Hank Thompson, a grungy New York bartender, in Darren Aronofsky’s new crime thriller, Caught Stealing.
Once a high school baseball star destined for the major leagues, Hank’s prospects went down the drain after a tragic teenage car wreck. But a decade on in 1998, life isn’t so bad. He’s got a steady job; a gorgeous, whip-smart paramedic girlfriend (Zoë Kravitz) who wants to take their relationship to the next level; and his beloved San Francisco Giants are on a winning streak.
However, things take a nosedive when his punk rocker neighbour, Russ (Matt Smith), leaves Hank to look after his cat while he returns to London to visit his ailing father. What seems like a benign favour eventually spirals into catastrophe, dropping Hank in the middle of a skirmish between eclectic sects of New York’s criminal underbelly.
The seedy scene into which Hank falls isn’t your run-of-the-mill cast of gangsters and drug dealers. The world of Caught Stealing toes the line between utterly bizarre and unflinchingly brutal. Hank first tastes trouble when a pair of Russian heavies show up at his door. They’ve got a similar flavour of bumbling everyman nonchalance as the scene-stealing henchmen in Anora, though none of the buffoonish innocuousness. These are genuinely maniacal and sadistic figures; one minute arguing, Tarantino-esque, about pepperoni pizza, and the next, beating Hank to within an inch of his life.
Courtesy of Sony Pictures UK
Aronofsky does well to balance these competing tones and stages the violence so that it feels uniquely hard-hitting. But the real credit goes to screenwriter Charlie Huston, who adapts his own novel. Huston’s script is witty, particularly in the hands of performers like Kravitz and Nikita Kukushkin (one feral half of the Russian duo), and genuinely surprising. Few films, while promoted as such, earn the moniker ‘thriller’, though Caught Stealing does and then some. There are three or four genuinely shocking narrative hairpins throughout, which fly out of the blue, presumably like curveballs thrown by Hank in his better days.
And though Caught Stealing doesn’t rely on its performers, there are plenty of bright sparks throughout. Aside from Kravitz and Kukushikin, Liev Schreiber and Vincent D’Onofrio deliver delightfully understated turns as Lipa and Shmully, Orthodox Jews whose religious devoutness is counteracted by their casual ruthlessness. Smith also has his moments as the whinging, mohawked Sex Pistol wannabe – with a few targeted gags just for us Brits – even though he doesn’t seem completely comfortable with his adopted Cockney accent.
However, Caught Stealing isn’t without issues. Once revealed, the reasons behind Hank’s predicament are confusing and underwhelming, divulged in a deluge of exposition delivered by Smith. Plus, however competently handled and compellingly delivered, some elements feel rehashed from classic cinematic canon. The reluctant hero/animal bond is a tired trope that Aronofsky does nothing original with. And one scene, where Lipa and Shmully drag Hank for matzah ball soup at their bubbe’s house, wobbles between homage to, and direct rip-off of, the famous dinner scene in Goodfellas.
Moreover, the less attention paid to the plausibility of the action, the better. The free rein with which the criminals run amok throughout New York City without encountering law enforcement is quite ludicrous. At one point, after shooting up a nightclub with automatic pistols, Lipa and Shmully leisurely return to the police-taped crime scene to retrieve their minivan. It doesn’t occur to them or the filmmakers that two perps so conspicuously garbed in Hasidic dress would be recognised and apprehended on the spot.
Courtesy of Sony Pictures UK
Hanging over the main action is the accident from Hank’s youth that ended his baseball prospects. Aronofsky and Huston begin to explore its ramifications, particularly Hank’s denial and subsequent confrontation of his role in the tragedy, but their inquest is shallow at best. Of this decision not to probe deeper, I’m of two minds. On one hand, it’s an intriguing psychological question that would’ve helped Caught Stealing stand out from more generic, action-based crime thrillers. At the same time, to spend too much time delving into questions of trauma and guilt may have hindered the film’s pacing, which remains snappy throughout.
In the end, Aronofsky and Huston deliver a flawed but engaging romp through a fresh-feeling Big Apple underworld. Featuring a stellar cast, Caught Stealing dishes out more thrills and left turns than you’d expect in under two hours without becoming overburdened. In an age where sluggish, self-indulgent three-hour flicks have become the norm, this is worth celebrating.
Caught Stealing is in UK cinemas on the 29th of October.
Banner image: Courtesy of Sony Pictures UK
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