Caught Stealing (2 ½ stars out of 4)
There’s no shortage of movies out there determined to celebrate the world that is New York City. Spike Lee’s “Highest 2 Lowest” just played like a NYC Greatest Hits mix tape, and only needed a shot of the director sitting courtside at Madison Square Garden. Darren Aronofsky’s “Caught Stealing” is a time capsule of a seedy pre-9/11 New York, set in the late 1990s on Manhattan’s lower east side.
Based on the book by Charlie Huston—who also wrote the screenplay—“Caught Stealing” follows an ex-major league prospect whose wrong-place-wrong-time encounter pitches him into a criminal underworld that threatens him and everyone he loves.
Austin Butler plays Hank Thompson, a 20-something New York City bartender who is still reeling from a car accident that ended his prospects at a major league baseball career. Now stuck in Manhattan, the California transplant has one ray of hope in his life: a local paramedic named Yvonne (Zoe Kravitz), who appears ready to take their relationship to the next level.
Unfortunately, when Hank’s sketchy neighbor Russ (Matt Smith) asks him to take care of his cat while he heads to Britain to visit his ailing father, storm clouds threaten to crowd out that ray. An encounter with a pair of Russian mob lackeys looking for Russ leaves Hank short a kidney, and from here Hank stumbles headlong into a world that has anything but his best interests in mind.
Additional run-ins with the Russians are complemented by a narcotics detective named Roman (Regina King) and a pair of drug-running Hassidic Jews (Live Schreiber and Vincent D’Onofrio) who use their outer devotion to mask a life of criminal activity. Eventually Hank works out that Russ was sitting on about four million dollars’ worth of drug money, and everyone involved now thinks he is the key to the payout.
The mistaken identity premise, combined with the colorful cast of characters, evokes the Coen Brothers’ late 90s cult classic “The Big Lebowski,” whose setting feels like a west coast complement to “Caught Stealing.” The juxtaposition of quirk and violence will also remind viewers of 1994’s “Pulp Fiction,” 2000’s “Snatch,” or any number of examples from the genre.
But while certain comparisons can be taken as a compliment—and to be fair, there is quite a bit about Aronofsky’s effort that deserves praise—those other films highlight “Caught Stealing’s” core issue: its disconnected tone. Films like “Pulp Fiction” have provided stylish takes on the criminal underworld to great success, but “Caught Stealing” asks us to accept a pair of Hassidic button men who fret over driving on the Sabbath but have no issue murdering innocent people to “send a message.” Dial up the cartoonish, and you can get away with the absurd. But “Caught Stealing’s” more disturbing elements make the absurdity too hard to swallow.
At a level of its individual parts, “Caught Stealing” shows craft and expertise; to his credit, Butler makes an excellent sympathetic protagonist, and the wall-to-wall soundtrack is another nod to the “Pulp Fiction’s” and “Big Lebowski’s” of the crime caper genre. There’s definitely a craftsmanship in play that makes the film’s action sequences and general story engaging and interesting, even if certain twists feel too easy to see coming.
Maybe it’s just easier to laugh at the bad guys when the bad guys aren’t so bad. Somehow, “Caught Stealing” should have been more fun. There’s certainly a lot to suggest it could have been.
“Caught Stealing” is rated R for bloody violence and mayhem, profanity, and some sexual content/nudity.