Movie Review: Caught Stealing

Since his breakthrough directorial debut with Requiem for a Dream (2000), writer/director Darren Aronofsky has worked as one of the most prolific and important filmmakers of the new millennium. His latest work, an intriguing yet beguiling crime drama/dark comedy called Caught Stealing continues to solidify the cultural significance of this gifted filmmaker’s work and offers a new perspective of the anti-hero as well.

The film follows protagonist Hank Thompson, who is played with bravado by Austin Butler, a former high-school baseball star whose life didn’t exactly turn out the way he thought it would, as he navigates through a series of misadventures with his girlfriend (Zoë Kravitz) while he simultaneously looks after the cat left in his care by his punk rocker neighbor Russ (Matt Smith) who may have left him smack in the middle of a horde of gangsters and other nefarious types looking to collect on a debt owed by Russ.

Add to the mix a detective named Roman (Regina King) who is trying to get Hank to help her get the goods on the local Jewish gangster Lipa (Live Schreiber) and his brother Shmully (Vincent D’Onofrio) and Hank quickly seems like he is in way over his head.

While it may sound like the start of a sort of twisted comedic version of a gangster film, the stakes quickly become very serious as the fallout from a series of events begins to exhibit a rather high body count.

Director Aronofsky infuses the film with his usual visual flare, but this is by far the most understated that style has been in the whole of his oeuvre. The film is still beautiful to look at and captures the director’s impression of the city far more than one might expect it to, but it is a more straight-forward and honest depiction than he has attempted before.

Zoë Kravitz and Austin Butler in “Caught Stealing.” Photo by Courtesy of Sony Pictures – © Sony Pictures

Working from a script by Charlie Huston, who adapts his own source novel, Aronofsky lets the story and actors do most of the heavy lifting rather than control the narrative himself. The story is succinct and to the point and never wanders too far into left field to become distracting, yet there is still enough depth to keep things tense straight on through until the end of the film.

Although the horde of talent present in the film deserves praise at every level, it is Butler’s work as Hank that anchors the through line of the film and, as the hero of the film, offers the audience someone to root for and engage with. That comes through well as he teeters on the brink of becoming an anti-hero but somehow manages to avoid that perilous trap.

Though it may not resonate the way some of his more auteur centric work might, Caught Stealing signals a new era of sorts for Darren Aronofsky that portends an artist willing to take chances to tell an engaging and intriguing story the only way a filmmaker such as he is able.

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Mike Tyrkus

Editor in Chief at CinemaNerdz.com

An independent filmmaker, co-writer and director of over a dozen short films, the Editor in Chief of CinemaNerdz.com has spent much of the last three decades as a writer and editor specializing in biographical and critical reference sources in literature and the cinema, beginning in February 1991 reviewing films for his college newspaper. He was a member of the Detroit Film Critics Society, as well as the group's webmaster and one-time President for over a decade until the group ceased to exist. His contributions to film criticism can be found in Magill's Cinema Annual, VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever (of which he was the editor for nearly a decade until it too ceased to exist), the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, and the St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia (on which he collaborated with editor Andrew Sarris). He has also appeared on the television program Critic LEE Speaking alongside Lee Thomas of FOX2 and Adam Graham, of The Detroit News. He currently lives in the Detroit area with his wife and their dogs.

@miketyrkus

Mike Tyrkus

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