Darren Aronofsky, who last directed Brendan Fraser in his Oscar-winning performance in The Whale, is back with a new comedy/crime thriller, Caught Stealing.
In it, Austin Butler stars as Hank, a former baseball prodigy unwittingly drawn into a wild search for missing drug money across late-1990s New York City. Zoë Kravitz co-stars as his girlfriend, a paramedic who is beginning to question whether their relationship has any future.
Many reviewers have noted the film as a significant change of pace for luminary director Aronofsky. Prior to this, he’s been a filmmaker best known for his extremely dark psychological dramas. In addition to The Whale, he’s also made Black Swan, mother!, The Wrestler, Requiem for a Dream, and my personal favorite, Pi, all of which are intense depictions of obsessive, self-destructive characters that we follow on a relentless downward spiral.
By comparison, Caught Stealing is much more lighthearted, as Butler’s protagonist is a fairly normal, likable guy thrown into extraordinary circumstances where he must use his wits to survive. The hook is simple — where’s the loot? — while the execution is, of course, endlessly complicated.
Charlie Huston’s screenplay, based on his own novel of the same name, is impressive in how it keeps us on our toes. It takes real ingenuity to keep introducing new twists without ever becoming artificially contrived; you don’t often see this much plot machinery run this smoothly.
In look and feel, the film is like a throwback to an older era, harkening back to the best work of 80s and 90s genre masters like Jonathan Demme and David Fincher. If you’re a fan of Something Wild and The Game, you’ll find a lot to appreciate in this classic-style thriller where the setups are carefully laid, and the payoffs are a bit delayed by modern standards. That makes it all the more satisfying when they arrive, since we’ve been given the time to properly understand the stakes and develop a genuine emotional investment.
Among the best setpieces are a frantic foot chase through a crowded neighborhood, and a narrow escape aided by Mets fans pouring out of Shea Stadium, with some clever use of a running gag involving the hero’s obsession with the San Francisco Giants — very unusual for an alleged New Yorker.
A memorable supporting gallery of eccentric weirdos populates the sidelines. Griffin Dunne, star of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours (another spiritual influence), looks unrecognizable as an aging hippie Army vet; Vincent D’Onofrio and Liev Schreiber are equally unfamiliar as a pair of fearsome yet oddly endearing Hasidic brothers; and Matt Smith, the former “Doctor Who,” really flexes his character actor muscles as Hank’s punk rock neighbor.
It’s Smith’s seemingly innocent request for cat-sitting that pulls Hank into the criminal underworld (with the litter box, of all things, literally holding the key to the mystery), and he adds a funny nervous energy as a character who turns out to be even less equipped to deal with the resulting craziness than Hank.
Butler, whose career has been exploding following his starring role in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, once again shows what a remarkable leading man he is, with an ability to both carry an entire film on star charisma and, at the same time, to vanish completely into whatever role he takes on.
He delivers a surprisingly vulnerable performance here, which is quietly weighed with guilt and regret. Hank is hiding some secrets — deep scars, gradually revealed through flashbacks. Pulled helplessly along by events beyond his control, Hank often seems more a victim than a hero, staying alive mostly through luck and chance — and Butler isn’t afraid to play it that way. Hank is not a superhuman movie character: he’s an overwhelmed, believable person, fighting back pain and fear, who knows he’s in way over his head.
Our first indication, early on, of just how much danger Hank is in comes after he meets a hotheaded Russian gangster. Hank winds up beaten so severely that he wakes up in the hospital sans one kidney. A few more shocking, violent twists — including a real doozy I won’t spoil — make it clear all bets are off. As a viewer, I was seriously wondering whether anyone would make it out in one piece, even the cat.
You can judge the quality of any thriller by how much it makes you sweat. I came out of this one appropriately worn and ragged, not to mention exhilarated. Stay for the most elaborate credits sequence in recent memory, and see Caught Stealing on a theater screen while you still can.