Caught Stealing Review | Austin Butler Powers Darren Aronofsky’s Coolly Slapdash Crime Caper

Throughout his career, Darren Aronosky has made boldly dark, punishing dramas, a raft of grilling character portraits. From Requiem for a Dream (2000) to Black Swan (2010) to Mother! (2017), his cinema judders through delirious provocations, increasingly testing the limits of audience endurance. This gives him a divisive bent. As vividly intense as his films are, they can often come out misinterpreted, read through with a sole thrust to challenge and unnerve. Caught Stealing arrives as a bolt from the blue—a cheerily violent departure from everything he’s done, spruced with abundant cool and a pleasantly unbothered attitude. But every now and then, the darkness at the heart of Aronofsky’s worldview leaks in. What feels poppingly fresh and startling is the pliancy with which he makes a seedy underworld crash into daily life. The most unwitting folks in Caught Stealing end up trapped in the crosshairs of mob murderousness.

Hank (Austin Butler) was once primed for a shining baseball career. But an accident and a death threw it all upside down. With the film unrolling, he’s a New York bartender. The year is 1998. He just whittles away his post-work hours with his girlfriend Yvonne (Zoe Kravitz in a thankless role). The plot kicks off when his British neighbor Russ (Matt Smith in a mohawk, having a blast) requests him to look after his cat while he’s away visiting his sick father. Hesitantly, Hank agrees, little knowing the infinite trouble in store. Suddenly, there are Russian goons roughing up Hank, demanding information linked to Russ he swears he’s clueless about.

Butler piles high a woozy, feckless charm that makes his stardom beam off the screen. His Hank inhabits the world much too loosely, swinging by and barely taking stock. His girlfriend suggests he stop running from his life and start owning up. Drowning himself in alcohol is the only way Hank comes to terms with guilt and regret. Parts of it slowly fall into place as the film unravels. When Caught Stealing opens, Hank is a man with a tucked-away past. His daily check-in with his mom is a constant—the sole anchor to a distant, unclear home meant to be pushed away.

Hank is one of those people who always finds himself in a soup and insists he had no hand. He attracts danger and the wrong crowd. Even as he keeps fleeing, there are new complications, with different rivals out to nab him. Often, he becomes collateral damage, as the people he loves are pulled into his mess. Butler plays it languid, projecting no motive whatsoever and going with the chaotic flow. It’s much later that Hank’s tumult—the painful weight of his past inflecting his latter attitudes and decisions—emerges in the film. Butler is in perfect sync with Aronofsky’s cool, airily careless tone.

An adaptation of Charlie Huston’s eponymous 2004 novel, the film combines manic unpredictability with a hangdog lax spirit. Tension and humor sit cheek-by-jowl. Regina Hall plays a cop who may know more than she professes to. She gets you nervously squirming, while tossing the stakes right in front. Hank is at sea in a world that boasts its freely amoral logic and goes by its own heedless, insensate logic. Butler accentuates Hank’s innocence and stark oblivion with jerking depth. The more Hank tries to get a grip, the more ruthless his wretchedness becomes, cornered from all sides. Through direly escalating situations, Russ’ cat becomes Hank’s inseparable ally.

It's remarkable how giddily alive and young the film feels, even as Aronofsky has been around for a while. Caught Stealing buoyantly catches the drift of an impetuously mannered sense of being that steadily finds its best efforts thwarted by the world. Aronofsky’s trademark cynicism perforates the edges, even as he delights in this broken, sad world. Somewhere in between, though, Caught Stealing seems blindsided by stasis. There’s a lot of movement and antics without characters revealing newer sides. However, lest the action hog too much of the frame, Aronofsky assembles few delectable side players. A pair of Hassidic guys (essayed by Vincent D’Onofrio and Liev Schreiber) and a detour at their mother’s place dishes out charming contrasts—humor clenched within peril. This is what defines the film. It’s loose and scrambling and not at all coy in puncturing tension with a grim joke that only thrums the stakes louder. However, it’s when Smith barges back on screen that Caught Stealing ratchets up several notches funnier and zanier. Smith is an actor capable of electric unknowability. You can never be sure what tricks he has up his sleeve, so it’s also unfortunate Aronofsky brings him back so late and in fleeting measure.

Nevertheless, Caught Stealing is revved up with high energy, as Aronofsky’s go-to DP Matthew Libatique’s camera shoots through alleyways of NYC—each a door to the joyously contraband. Like a deck of cards collapsing, Aronofsky taps the widening disarray in Hank’s utter inability to contain the worst odds stacked against him. But it’s in the mayhem where Hank must resolve his demons and untangle the guilt of the past he keeps evading. Though the film darts and chases its characters through snowballing madness, Butler bases it with sobering complexion and emotional nuance. This hopscotching film may feel too slight at times, but Aronofsky’s deft lightness lets it stay on course.