- CAUGHT STEALING
- Starring: Austin Butler, Regina King and Zoe Kravitz
- Directed by: Darren Aronofsky
- Rated: R
- Running time: 1 hr 47 mins
- SONY/Columbia Pictures
Our score: 2 out of 5
If there is one thing that the pandemic and the advent of streaming have not changed about the entertainment industry, it’s that any movie entering the marketplace around Labor Day is going to be lacking.
If Sony suspected that this offering from auteur director Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler) with an A-list cast had awards potential, they’d probably have released it in the summer or later in the fall.
They know this won’t be much competition to a holiday cookout or the more focused movies coming down the pipeline.
The script by Charlie Huston, working from his novel, features a menagerie of colorful New York lowlifes who torment a lowly bartender named Hank Thompson (Austin Butler) simply because a Mohawk-sporting Cockney named Russ (Matt Smith) has left the Big Apple for his hometown of London without informing anyone else.
Because Russ is out of town, his business partners in illicit trades want a return on their investments. Because Hank is around but Russ isn’t, a pair of sadistic Russian leg breakers (Nikita Kukushkin, Yuri Kololnikov) pummel Hank inches from death even though he has no idea how Russ affords to feed his violent cat or get his gets his well-maintained punk hairdos.
Hank’s smarter paramedic girlfriend Yvonne (Zoë Zravitz) picks him up at the hospital and suggests that he call the cops. The detective who arrives on the scene (Regina King) loves making wisecracks but does little more than warn Hank he’s inadvertently crossed two Hassidic brothers (Liev Schriber, Vincent D’Onofrio) so devout they won’t drive on Shabbos but will deal in chemical recreation and lethal force.
While Huston compiles a formidable body count from his ensemble cast and gives them lots of excentric and sometimes off-putting things to do, Aronofsky’s tone varies from gritty to eye-rollingly silly. When the actors seem to be playing a scene for laughs, Aronofsky dishes out some gore that might make David Cronenberg blush.
In Elvis and The Bikeriders, Butler has proven himself to be a formidable leading man, but here Huston and Aronofsky haven’t given him much of a role. For much of the film, he seems like a hapless bystander who inadvertently invites the fatalities that accumulate in his path.
With the possible exception of Schriber and D’Onofrio’s sibling drug mongers, who manage to be both funny and threatening, most of the oddballs in Caught Stealing aren’t engaging enough to make viewers wonder if they’ll make it to the end. Griffin Dunne as an aging hippie poet and Carol Kane Scriber and D’Onofrio’s matriarch are sadly underutilized. Aronofsky’s frantic pacing may be a disservice to his performers because it reduces their chance to shine.
The central McGuffin isn’t that well-conceived, and Hank’s eagerness for never making it into Major League Baseball can only carry the film so far.
Because this is Labor Day, we can take comfort that all involved will be working on something better soon. It’s a shame they wasted their talents on such an unworthy grift.
On a scale of zero to five, I give “Caught Stealing” ★★