Caught Stealing, 2025.
Directed by Darren Aronofsky.
Starring Austin Butler, Regina King, Zoë Kravitz, Matt Smith, Liev Schreiber, Vincent D’Onofrio, Benito Martínez Ocasio, Griffin Dunne, and Carol Kane.
SYNOPSIS:
Darren Aronofky’s latest, Caught Stealing, arrives on 4K Ultra HD with a smattering of bonus features and a code for a digital copy. It’s a fun film that’s worth your time, with a cast of colorful characters and a scene-stealing cat.
I admit I haven’t kept up with all of director Darren Aronofsky’s movies over the years. Pi was a great debut, but I’ve been off and on when checking out his films. Some, such as The Whale, didn’t interest me for personal reasons.
However, Caught Stealing caught my attention because of its great cast and intriguing premise. The film goes through so many twists and turns that are densely packed with plot points, which left me unable to spend much time trying to guess ahead of the story. That’s the mark of a solid film, in my book, although this one has one particular head-scratching moment that left it short of the mark.
Set in 1998, this movie stars Austin Butler as Henry “Hank” Thompson, a former highly-touted Major League Baseball prospect now working as a bartender in New York City’s Lower East Side. His girlfriend, Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz), does her best to support him while trying not to enable his drinking.
When his mohawked neighbor Russ Miner (Matt Smith) abruptly asks Hank to watch his cat because he needs to go home to London, Hank ends up pulled into a conflict between Russian, Puerto Rican, and Jewish mobsters that tests his ability to survive by his wits. He tries to rely on police detective Elise Roman (Regina King) for help, but doing so only makes the situation worse for him.
The cast of characters surrounding Hank are a lot of fun to watch chewing up the scenery, whether it’s the thuggish Russians or the Hasidic Drucker brothers (played by Liev Schreiber and Vincent D’Onofrio), who don’t want to run afoul of their beloved Bubbe (Carol Kane). Russ is an over-the-top punk rock Brit who’s the reason for Hank getting into such a mess but may also be able to help him get out of it when he returns from England.
About that head-scratching moment: There’s a scene where Hank ends up in a basement room with a steel door, where he and his bar owner employer Paul (Griffin Dunne) have holed up, with adversaries on the other side. It was a great “How is he going to get out of this mess?” moment whose resolution felt like a cheat. (I’ll have to check out the novel this film is based on to see how it handles that situation).
Sony has issued Caught Stealing on 4K Ultra HD with a code included for a digital copy. There’s no Blu-ray, but that’s okay since the bonus features found here don’t take up much room on the platter anyway.
The extras run about 20 minutes total and consist of four featurettes: Aronofsky: The Real Deal, which features the director and Charlie Huston, the author of the Caught Stealing novel; Casting Criminals, Chaos, and a Cat, which looks at this great cast, including an adorable cat; I Don’t Drive, a reference to a line from Hank and an exploration of the stunt work; and A New York Story, an overview of a city that has changed a lot in the 27 years since 1998.
Caught Stealing is Huston’s first novel in a series of books starring Hank Thompson, so it will be interesting to see if the others get a green light too.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Brad Cook
