Posted in: Kaitlyn Booth, Movies, Review, Sony | Tagged: caught stealing, Darren Arnofsky

Caught Stealing Review: Darren Aronofsky Plays It Safe

Caught Stealing is decidedly mediocre both as an entry into Darren Aronofsky's filmography and the crime thriller genre as a whole.

Caught Stealing and its mediocrity would be better received by other directors, but Darren Aronofsky has always been shooting so far beyond the stars compared to his peers that "it's fine" is somehow worse than the film being horrible or outstanding.

Director: Darren Aronofsky
Summary: Burned-out ex-baseball player Hank Thompson unexpectedly finds himself embroiled in a dangerous struggle for survival amidst the criminal underbelly of 1990s New York City, forced to navigate a treacherous underworld he never imagined.

Caught Stealing will be a movie that is more recognizable as something it isn't, rather than something it is. What it is is another crime movie where everyone is terrible, a lot of people die, if one person would stop making the worst decisions, this whole thing could end, backed by the 1998 backdrop being unironically framed in a way that makes this a period piece. This is what is known as a 'comedy of errors', which is defined as "a situation made amusing by bungling and incompetence." Perhaps this one would be something like a black comedy of errors, considering the subject matter and the body count. The main guy we are following is Hank (Austin Butler), who just gets the worst end of the stick when he agrees to cat sit for one of his neighbors, Russ (Matt Smith).

Suddenly, Russ's problems become Hank's problems for reasons that don't entirely make sense. It is completely logical that a neighbor wouldn't know everything about the person living next to him, but large portions of this plot rest on the idea that living right next to each other means you should be in each other's business. While Hank getting pulled into all of this initially was just bad luck and people being stupid, the reason he is still in it is a mistake of his own making that was entirely preventable. When your character is responsible not only for all of their own problems, but the consequences of said problems are getting other people killed, it's hard to care if Hank is going to figure out a way out of this. He's not being presented in the narrative as a good person, but considering how avoidable all of this was and how many other people die because Hank is stupid, it makes it hard for you to sympathize with his plight in any way.

Hank is the least interesting part of Caught Stealing because the merry little band of murderers that are trying to get information out of him are all far more interesting. The trailer is hyping up Lipa (Liev Schreiber) and Shmully (Vincent D'Onofrio), a pair of Orthodox Jewish brothers. But they are the ones we get the least amount of time with. It's a shame, because the two of them are excellent in the scenes we do see them in, and the time between their moments feels far too long. We spend a little more time with Pavel (Nikita Kukushkin), Colorado (Bad Bunny), and Aleksei (Yuri Kolokolnikov), but it's Kukushkin who steals all of those moments by playing one of the most buckwild gangsters you've seen in a while. His cruelty is so over the top that it becomes comedy, and he casts yet another shadow for Butler's Hank to get lost in.

There's also a cat, but the cat is obviously perfect, 10/10, no notes, I don't care if he's a biter, he's still perfect.

The performances in Caught Stealing are all well done, and no one really drops the ball in any way that could possibly matter. While this film might be the least Darren Aronofsky film to ever Darren Aronofsky, the man is still one of the best director's working right now. The vibes of late '90s New York City are a very specific time period, and this isn't just window dressing either. There are big and small things happening that subtly draw your attention to the time period, and it's not just the music. Aronofsky and the rest of his behind-the-scenes crew did a great job of authentically capturing the city. It basks in an excellent soundtrack that makes everything feel very real. We have some of the signature Aronofsky tells, like the close-up POV's and whatnot, and it does make the various chases feel like a rat being hunted by a bunch of very well-trained cats.

However, there isn't anything in Caught Stealing that is particularly groundbreaking either. There's nothing wrong with coming in, adapting a genre, and doing a damn good job of it without any sort of flair. We expect more from someone like Aronofsky, and you can't really judge films in a vacuum. You're going to compare the director's previous work and other work within the same genre. Caught Stealing is decidedly mediocre both as an entry into Aronofsky's filmography and the crime thriller genre as a whole.

It means that we have a movie where everything is either "fine" or "pretty good," but it feels like it could have been made by a multitude of other directors working right now. Would we be kinder to the film if it weren't Aronofsky behind the camera? Maybe. Some are calling this his most "approachable" work, which is true; this is a very approachable film, but it's approachable in the same way a lot of mid-tier crime thrillers are. It is approachable by taking very few risks because being approachable usually means playing it safe. If you want to cast a wide net, you need to appeal to a lot of different demographics at once. Again, not a bad thing to do, but Aronofsky has also shone when he's attempting to court a very specific audience or maybe no audience at all. The decision to release Caught Stealing at the end of the summer makes sense because this feels like another late summer movie no one is going to be talking about by the time the Halloween decorations go up.

Caught Stealing

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Review by Kaitlyn Booth

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7/10

Caught Stealing and its mediocrity would be better received by other directors, but Darren Aronofsky has always been shooting so far beyond the stars compared to his peers that "it's fine" is somehow worse than the film being horrible or outstanding.

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