Caught Stealing (15)

Former baseball player Henry "Hank" Thompson works behind a bar to make ends meet and spends an occasional evening with Yvonne. He foolishly agrees to cat-sit for British neighbour Russ and walks unwittingly into the middle of a turf war between Russian heavies, Puerto Rican thug Colorado and Hebrew duo Lipa and Shmully. Hank quickly deduces Russ is the target of these various criminal interests and he is pummelled and tortured for information about his neighbour's whereabouts.

LondonNet Film Review

Caught Stealing (15) Film Review from LondonNet

Oscar-nominated writer-director Darren Aronofsky struts defiantly on the wrong side of the law in a bruising crime yarn set in 1998 New York. Adapted by Charlie Huston from his own novel, Caught Stealing engineers a frenetic chase through the mean streets of a city in Mayor Giuliani’s iron-fisted grasp, where a draconian law banning dancing in bars without a licence causes nightlife to steadily flatline. Austin Butler is more shook up than his star-making turn in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis as a down-on-his-luck bartender, who is in the wrong place at the wrong time and loses one kidney then his dignity as he is forced to fight for survival against outrageous and overwhelming odds…

Aronofsky stages the bone-crunching fisticuffs and slow-motion car crashes with elan and cinematographer Matthew Libatique, who has worked on all his pictures, brings impeccably lit dynamism to each grimly compelling set-piece. Matt Smith’s extravagantly mohawked punk, who sets the contrived plot in motion, verges on caricature but Carol Kane sparkles in a brief cameo as a Jewish mother, who wisely counsels Butler’s much-abused hero against flashing his pretty boy smile in the face of adversity. “If you can’t bite, don’t show your teeth,” she whispers. He plies his star power regardless.

Henry “Hank” Thompson (Butler) shattered his dreams of playing professional baseball in a fatal car accident and now he seeks refuge in a bottle (or six) when he isn’t working as a bartender on the Lower East Side or enjoying regular hook-ups with paramedic Yvonne (Zoe Kravitz). She urges Hank to face his fears (“Run away from what you’re afraid of, then it owns you!”) especially if he wants a long-term future with her.

Hank foolishly agrees to cat-sit for foul-mouthed British neighbour Russ (Smith) and walks unwittingly into the middle of a turf war between Russian thugs Aleksei (Yuri Kolokolnikov) and Pavel (Nikita Kukushkin), Puerto Rican heavy Colorado (Bad Bunny) and Hassidic brothers Lipa (Liev Schreiber) and Shmully (Vincent D’Onofrio). It transpires that Russ is sitting on “an exotically huge amount of cash” totalling a little over four million dollars, which he should have distributed to interested parties before he flew back to the UK. Hank’s blissful ignorance is rewarded with dizzying physical blows and a visit from police detective Roman (Regina King).

Caught Stealing is a slick and engrossing chase thriller that compels us to root for Butler’s undeserving patsy as cameras barrel through recognisable New York neighbourhoods. Strong female characters impose themselves with limited screen time. While humans are treated like punch bags in close-up, a scene-stealing feline is mistreated off camera. Aronofsky’s fight club has limits.

– Kim Hu