Austin Butler

CAUGHT STEALING: Aronofsky picked off first base

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Photo caption: Liev Schrieber, Austin Butler and Vincent D’Onofrio in CAUGHT STEALING. Courtesy of Columbia Pictures.

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.

THE BIKERIDERS: they ride, drink and fight, and yet we care

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Photo caption. Jodie Comer and Austin Butler in THE BIKERIDERS. Courtesy of Focus Features.

The Bikeriders is Jeff Nichols’ engrossing exploration of the culture of a 1960s Midwestern motorcycle gang and its (unfortunate) evolution. The source material is a book by a photographer who embedded himself with a real biker gang, and taped interviews as well as photographing them.

The gang was founded by Johnny (Tom Hardy), inspired by a TV rebroadcast of The Wild One, in which the biker played by Marlon Brando is asked what are he is rebelling against, and replies, Whadda you got? The bikers are a collection of misfits who share an ethos of breaking every available rule. Of course, none of these guys know what an ethos is, let alone intend to have one.

The most reckless biker is Benny (Austin Butler), whose girlfriend Kathy (Jodie Comer) is fiercely in love with him, but at most agnostic about the biker lifestyle. We see the story of the 1960s gang in flashback; Kathy, from the 1970s, narrates the story.

The Bikeriders bears out Nichol’s great gift as a storyteller – recognizing the humanity in his characters. I guarantee that I would, in real life, not care one whit about any of these characters. But, in The Bikeriders, I did care and was deeply invested in them.

Nichols’ previous films Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter, Mud and Loving, have each made my list of their year’s best movies. Those films, three fictional and one historical, tell the stories of redneck brothers betrayed by their father, a quasi-supernatural psychiatric decompensation, a backwoods coming of age and interracial love in the Jim Crow South. What all of them have in common with The Bikeriders are the authentic, compelling characters.

After all, what mostly happens in The Bikeriders is drinking, fighting and riding motorcycles – and the plot traces the natural consequences. Motorcycle riding is a relatively dangerous activity, as are binge drinking and fighting, so you won’t be surprised that not everyone comes out unscathed

Tom Hardy and Austin Butler in THE BIKERIDERS. Courtesy of Focus Features.

As Johnny, Tom Hardy is an amalgam of world weariness and alpha power. Hardy is known for his physicality, but his Johnny looks like more of an average guy than his characters often do; he doesn’t look scary at first glance, but no one wants to mess with him. Hardy is able to project internal steeliness.

The Wife noted that Austin Butler just looks like movie star. Indeed, when a barroom crowd parts so that Kathy can first glimpse Butler’s Benny at the end of a pool table in all his hunkiness, the scene evokes when John Garfield first sees Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice, or when Burt Lancaster first sees Claudia Cardinale in The Leopard. Benny is so devoid of emotion for most of the movie, the key to Butler’s performance is making us wonder whether there’s any empathy buried deep down in there someplace. Is Benny a one-dimensional sociopath or somebody able to repress his feelings?

Jodie Comer in THE BIKERIDERS. Courtesy of Focus Features.

The Bikeriders is a showcase for Jody Comer, whom I had most recently seen playing a medieval French noblewoman in The Last Duel, as the biker girlfriend brimming with ambivalence. The Bikeriders works because of Comer’s matter of fact and perceptive narration; Kathy is the only surviving character who is observant and articulate enough to tell the story. Comer’s performance definitely merits an Oscar nomination.

As Kathy, Comer, who grew up in and lives in Liverpool, sounds like a lifetime Chicagoan; it’s the best American regional accent in the movies since Frances McDormand’s Marge Gunderson in Fargo.

Nichols essentially discovered and launched the career of Michael Shannon in Shotgun Stories; Shannon has acted in all of Nichol’s films except Loving. Shannon is again wonderful here in a small, juicy role. Emory Cohen and Norman Reedus sparkle as gang members Cockroach and Funny Sonny, respectively.

Nichol’s character-driven slice of biker life is a grand movie, and Jodie Comer elevates it even more.