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Caught Stealing Gets Away With It

Caught Stealing might be the most strictly conventional movie Darren Aronofsky has ever made -and that is not a criticism. With his movies so often steeped in complexities and metaphors and experimentation -and usually around dense or heavy subject matter, it’s a little refreshing to see him cut loose of that for a change and honestly try his hand at making a crowd-pleaser, or what could at least modestly pass for one from him. It is certainly not a joy ride a lot of the time, but it is a legitimate ride -an original crime thriller with effective tension and twists that Aronofsky can still bring some style and character to. And a movie like this honestly feels quite welcome at the end of a dry August.
Adapted by Charlie Huston from his own novel, the film stars Austin Butler as Hank, a bartender in late 90s Manhattan, originally from California, and persistently haunted by the drunken car accident that killed his friend and ended a promising baseball career. While his British neighbour Russ (Matt Smith) is away in London and he is assigned to look after his cat Bud, Hank is attacked by goons of the Russian mafia looking for a stash of four million dollars Russ owes them. The hunt for the money, Hank’s assumed connection to it, and his efforts to escape soon spiral, ultimately involving his girlfriend Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz), a narcotics officer (Regina King), Russ himself obviously, and a pair of Hasidic gangsters (Liev Schreiber and Vincent D’Onofrio) from whom the money was stolen in the first place.
Butler grounds the film incredibly well as the average guy thrust into the middle of a deadly situation. It’s fitting that Griffin Dunne is cast as Hank’s boss at the bar, because his character in Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, and that movie on the whole, feels like a likely influence on both Butler and Aronofsky in the construction, pace, and energy of Hank’s movement through this movie. The tension just continues to escalate as the situation, often out of Hank’s control, gets more and more complicated and dangerous, and it comes at some visceral cost and threat. Emphasis is made on his injury following the first attack -requiring the removal of one of his kidneys- as well as the wound he suffered to his knee in that accident. Hank is a man with several vulnerabilities the movie keeps front of mind, both physical and personal, and as these are threatened and innocents connected to him die, the stakes are rendered simple and immediate to process.
And Butler actually makes for a very good everyman in spite of his intense movie star looks and charisma, not to mention some of the things he has to do through this movie. Because he plays a lot of it with an identifiable air of confusion and fear, it is easier to still relate once he starts taking a more active role -going from the isolated pawn multiple parties keep pushing around to the valuable figure in control of what everyone wants. He also effectively plays the humour, which balances out the movie’s tone, keeping things sharp and further endearing the films’ action in the midst of so much instability and danger. He’s surrounded by a great ensemble: King in the most intimidating performance I’ve seen from her, Kravitz in a greatly likeable and authentic turn as the exuberant though apprehensive girlfriend -sharing a superb chemistry with Butler, and Smith having real fun with his idiot punk-rocker role, even as he plays to the heights of stereotype (there’s a portion of the movie that pairs him with Butler against the Russians, and he proves a very strong counterpoint). The Hasidic gangsters are also somewhat played to stereotype -theirs is just a very novel conception that Schreiber and D’Onofrio lean into with a kind of wicked charm. At one point we see their vendetta paused for Shabbos dinner, and Aronofsky illustrates the humour in this with a twinge of warmth -after all their mother is played by Carol Kane.
The presence of Bud through the movie has a somewhat similar effect. An arc that you might not notice at first is Hank’s dismay with the cat that has grown into genuine affection by the end -a constant as his world endures a consistent heavy turbulence in fortunes. In the end this relationship even comes to embody Hank’s triumph over his trauma from the car accident, itself one of the better visual articulations I’ve seen of the way a traumatic episode lingers in the mind, the destruction seen in every minute yet visceral detail. Aronofsky doesn’t apply that to his action typically in the film, but he does construct some very good set-pieces, such as a chase in a roundabout at Flushing Meadows, or Hank’s evasion of the brothers through a series of Manhattan bodegas and small businesses. Aronofsky is a New Yorker and rarely has his experience of the city been so emphatically showcased as in this movie, where the city itself, its labyrinths and recesses, is such a major part of the story’s character and effect. From the crummy apartment with the bad toilet that Hank (and Yvonne) just have to tolerate to the distinct worlds of the Jewish neighbourhoods of the Lower East Side and the beaches of Coney Island. It brings to mind in fact another recent New York movie that involves the impulsive actions of Russian gangsters, Anora.
Caught Stealing is no Anora, but it thrives just as much off of its chaotic energy, likewise melding humour with severity, though in a different form. Its heart is rooted in the empathy we feel for Hank, a man with foibles but no need to get caught up in such a harrowing situation largely against his will. A man with a sweet girlfriend and a tender relationship with his mother, whom he routinely phones to talk about the San Francisco Giants with.
The movie suffers the occasional weakness -the thread tying Hank's trauma in with a call to action in the third act is noticeably frail and undeveloped. And the story does partake in a tiresome trope that is well below its other creative choices. The drama is nonetheless compelling and lively though, the twists and turns are broadly fun, and the film manages a frenetic pace without getting away from itself. For Aronofsky's biggest fans it might be disappointing in its lack of psychological study or meditative symbolism, but like when Coppola challenged Lucas to make a populist movie, it turned out great anyway, only emphasizing its filmmakers' laudable range.

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