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.

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2024 is shaping up to be a good year for movies about photography. “Civil War” already showed us a potential American conflict through the eyes of a photojournalist, and now “The Bikeriders” brings, of all things, a coffee table book to the big screen.

Jeff Nichols’ film is based on the real-life efforts of Danny Lyon, a photojournalist who embedded with the Vandals motorcycle club in Chicago in the late 1960s. Lyon’s photos and interviews eventually became a book—also called, “The Bikeriders.”

The story follows three main characters, Johnny (Tom Hardy) the founder of the Vandals, Benny (Austin Butler), his would-be successor, and Kathy (Jodie Comer), Benny’s wife, who also serves as the film’s narrator through Lyon’s interviews. In a narrative that mostly moves chronologically and often feels like a documentary, “The Bikeriders” traces the origins and rise of the Vandals in the late 1960s, while showing the growing influence of drugs and violence within biker culture.

Elements of the film will be familiar to anyone with a passing understanding of the Hell’s Angels, the iconography of the Harley Davidson, or even the tragedy of Altamont in 1969 (when the Rolling Stones hired the Angels to provide security, only to watch them murder a fan only a few feet from the stage). But what’s interesting about “The Bikeriders” is how it attempts to show how the Vandals began as a simple group of like-minded blue-collar Midwesterners who used to get together and race their bikes.

It isn’t long, however, before fierce territoriality sets in, and the movie draws continual tension from the constant friction between members of the club and most anyone they encounter, whether members of rival clubs or even upstarts looking to join the Vandals. One such upstart, played by Toby Wallace, provides a narrative thread that lingers beneath the surface of the film, nodding to the dark future of the club and its culture. Listed only as The Kid, Wallace’s character is a young foil to Hardy and even Butler, whose Brando-like detachment still feels older and wiser by comparison.

As good as the performances are from Hardy and Butler, though, Comer is the real highlight, guiding the narrative with a comic Midwestern drawl and a wide-eyed disbelief at the manic world she married into. Not only does Kathy provide the narration, but the audience also sees the movie through her outsider eyes.

Of course, the film puts a lot of emphasis on its cinematography, and manages to feature its many classic bikes without feeling too much like a Harley commercial. Tack on a period soundtrack and its dark sense of humor, and “The Bikeriders” becomes an immersive experience that feels like it does justice to its source material.

At the same time, like “Goodfellas” back in 1990, “The Bikeriders” stops short of showering its subject with too much sunshine. Nichols’ film takes pains to be honest, and between its spurts of violence and moral ambiguity, “The Bikeriders” manages to humanize its characters while stopping short of making them heroes. Even anti-hero feels like a stretch with a character like Johnny, who seems perfectly content to make innocent people pay in his quest to seek revenge on behalf of a fellow Vandal.

That may be one of the prime takeaways from “The Bikeriders:” it’s a good film about an unsettling subject. Even if many of today’s riders may be fueled by nostalgia and traditional 9-5 incomes, Nichols’ film showcases the ugly side of biker culture, before and after the drugs and the violence kicked in.

“The Bikeriders” is rated R for consistent profanity, scattered brutality and violence, and some frightening moments.

The post ‘The Bikeriders’ brings a fascinating photo project to life appeared first on Utah.Film.