Black Swan is one of my favorite movies ever, but I have never explored Darren Aronofsky’s filmography. Caught Stealing was a new experimental film for the director because it is much more mainstream. Austin Butler, Zoë Kravitz, and Regina King star in this crime thriller, which takes place in New York in the late 1990s. Hank Thompson, an ex-baseball prospect, finds himself in the middle of a dangerous plot after agreeing to watch his neighbor’s cat.
Austin Butler is an actor who continues to impress me. I haven’t seen him in Elvis, but he always has a great screen presence, like in Dune 2. He is in almost every scene, so he has to be a likable character. Butler gives humanity to his character Hank, helping to make him feel relatable. Hank also has a great character arc in the movie, and I think it is perfectly represented in his relationship with the cat.
The other characters are well-acted as well. I didn’t even realize Vincent D’Onofrio was playing his character, who was a rabbi. Matt Smith gave great energy in his role despite having limited screen time. All these characters shared the screen with Butler, but none of them had the chemistry that Zoë Kravitz did. Their relationship is very believable, and she was very impactful to his story.
The script was written by Charlie Huston, the author of the book that inspired the film. The narrative was very unpredictable and full of dark twists. There’s a specific point in the movie where it got super dark quickly, but it also had room for funny moments. The great writing created a balanced dark comedy. I also loved how the grungy production design of New York City added to the atmosphere. Caught Stealing is one of the best-looking movies of the year so far.
This is a movie that may continue to grow on me, especially if I watch it again. I didn’t have many problems with the movie. I found it to be super entertaining, but some characters
were overly eccentric. It was mainly one of the henchmen who bothered me. It worked for the story, but sometimes, these characters are annoying.
A certain choice of direction involving a prominent character bothered me. I felt like there was a better way to handle this character. What ended up happening did not upset me fully since it helped with the narrative. The marketing was a slight misdirection of how things unfolded.
Caught Stealing is a great genre film that I did not expect from Darren Aronofsky. It was a wild ride that came to a very satisfying conclusion. I highly recommend seeing this movie if you love Austin Butler or crime thrillers.