Caught Stealing Is a Wild and Violent Romp
Darren Aronofsky’s Caught Stealing sees the typically pretentious auteur shift gears toward fun and violence in late 1990s NYC. It’s a throwback to gritty 1970s filmmaking but set in the Giuliani era — the perfect setting for our downwardly mobile 2025.
Still from Caught Stealing. (Columbia Pictures)
As far as I can judge, the primary complaint about Darren Aronofsky’s generally well-reviewed — though not very popular — new film, Caught Stealing, is that it’s not a typical Darren Aronofsky film.
But that’s exactly what I liked about it. I’ve been a nonfan of Aronofsky’s since Pi put him on the map back in 1998. It’s good to discover so late in the game that Aronofsky can tackle a nice lowdown genre movie and pull it off with a certain élan.
With a script by Charlie Huston adapted from his own novel Caught Stealing is a darkly comic crime film about an alcoholic bartender named Henry “Hank” Thompson (Austin Butler) living in the grimy Lower East Side of New York City in 1998. He’s got a dingy little apartment; a hot girlfriend, Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz); and a passionate love of baseball, especially the San Francisco Giants. He also has a tendency to wake up suddenly from bad nightmares of a youthful car accident that ended his professional baseball playing prospects.
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