Darren Aronofsky’s new thriller, the Austin Butler-led Caught Stealing, has recieved nearly universal acclaim from critics and punters alike, with many hailing it as a suitably twisty action-thriller with terrific performances and period detail. The movie is certainly a departure coming from the director of such weighty, Oscar-winning dramas as Requiem for a Dream (2000), The Wrestler (2008), and Black Swan (2010), but does Caught Stealing live up to the early hype?
What is Caught Stealing about?
Butler stars as Hank Thompson, a former baseball prodigy who, after a devastating car wreck that curtails any professional hopes, ends up tending bar at an East Village dive circa 1998. Tasked by his mohawked, punk-rock neighbor (Matt Smith) with taking care of his beloved cat and his sketchy apartment, Hank and his long-suffering girlfriend Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz) find themselves in hot water with Russian gangsters and a pair of violent Hassidic Jews (Vincent D’Onofrio and Liev Schrieber), and doggedly pursued by a grizzled detective (Regina King).
Caught Stealing has earned rave reviews
It’s a little hard to parse the universal acclaim for Aronofsky’s latest, partly because it’s so completely average. It’s a perfectly serviceable, if fairly exhausting, Elmore Leonard-esque caper featuring a gang of quirky characters and bursts of extreme, head-smashing violence. In terms of quality, it’s surprisingly middle-of-the-road. It’s almost like, in trying to capture the late ‘90s period atmosphere, the filmmakers also sought to capture the mediocre quality of most of that decade’s crime movies. It’s a surprising misstep for Aronofsky, who has rarely made a bad film and, until now, never a boring one.
The mounting anxiety, pursuit across the city scenario recalls everything from Pineapple Express (2008) to Uncut Gems (2019) to Anora (2024), but Caught Stealing possesses little of what makes those films so memorable and does nothing to distinguish itself beyond empty pastiche. You’d think the director of mother!, that terrifically underrated, nerve-shredding anxiety freakout, would be able to easily capture the sense of danger that this story requires. But not only do the stakes feel null, the characters aren’t interesting or varied enough to sustain this wannabe wacky caper. This is the least Aronofsky-feeling Aronofsky movie in the director’s filmography. In many ways, it feels like a for-hire gig, with the filmmaker perhaps figuring he could get something more personal made off the strength of this movie’s presumed mainstream success.
The film is Aronofsky’s love letter to New York City
Clearly, what Aronofsky was most drawn to was recreating the New York of his youth. That’s where the movie really sings, and you can tell it’s where the director’s heart is. And his ode to a lost New York should not be discounted; his reverie is poignant and well-played. If only the rest of the movie measured up to that power, or even that level of interest. Caught Stealing is packed with intricate references to the director’s beloved city, photographed here with a grit and grime which would make Woody Allen reach for his glasses cleaner.
Aronofsky populates scenes with well-known neighborhood characters and non-actors, such as East Village staple Miss Kitty, who will be familiar to anyone who’s trekked to the neighborhood’s Village 7 cinema or its surrounding blocks. Just a few weeks after Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest lavished similar praise upon New York, Aronofsky adds his voice to the pile. (Caught Stealing also contains an identical scene to Lee’s film, a subway-set caper complicated by rabid sports rivalries.) It’s a shame his movie is so much less dynamic, so much less thrilling and potent.
