Caught Stealing is a genre picture by Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler, Black Swan, The Whale), who must have thought he was slumming by directing a genre movie. This is a darkly funny, violent thriller, the kind of movie that I almost always enjoy. But Aronofsky, working off a screenplay by Charlie Huston, has wasted a superb cast and a Hollywood-level budget on a movie so ordinary, that it’s not even worth streaming. It’s not even as good as Ethan Coen’s Honey Don’t or half of the fare on BritBox.
It didn’t have to be that way. As I watched Caught Stealing, I kept thinking of director Steven Soderbergh, who has made Oscar movies like Sex, Lies and Videotape, Erin Brockavich and Traffic, but now churns out genre movies like Kimi and No Sudden Move that may be less artsy but are solid entertainment. Or Richard Linklater, who could make the Before Midnight movies and Boyhood, the very best American cinema of our century, and still entertain us last year with Hit Man. Hell, Rian Johnson and Questin Tarantino ONLY make genre movies – and they’re wonderful. But the director has to love and respect the genre.
In Caught Stealing, Austin Butler plays Hank, a guy who has run away from his past to bartend at a scruffy Lower Manhattan bar in the early 2000s, in a neighborhood that people hoped that Giuliani would clean up. His dodgy punk neighbor (Matt Smith) has to suddenly leave town to visit his stricken father in Britain, and asks Hank to care for his cat. Unsurprisingly, lots of dangerous people show up who think that the neighbor has double-crossed them and that Hank must know where the loot is hidden. They beat him up, and threaten to kill him and his loved ones. This results in lots of chases through NYC as Hank, some scary Russian mobsters, a pair of Hasidic gangsters and a tenacious cop all pursue each other. There’s a bit of sex, lots of violence, and some mild laughs. There’s not a surprising or unpredictable moment here.
Austin Butler is an appealing hunk who was excellent in The Bikeriders and plenty good enough in Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood and Masters of the Air. He even dared to play Elvis Presley and was not the reason that Elvis was bad. Same here.
It’s an impressive cast, with Matt Smith (funny to see The Crown’s Prince Philip sporting a giant mohawk), Liev Schrieber and Vincent D’Onofrio, and Carol Kane and Laura Dern have brief cameos. But the performances by Regina King, Zoe Kravitz and Griffin Dunne are so good, that justice requires them to work in a better movie.
The movie/s title comes from Hank having sabotaged a once promising baseball career, but Darren Aronofsky didn’t even make it to the bag at second base – he was picked off at first.