Why does it always seem that when one bad thing happens to you, the floodgates open to every single thing going wrong in your life? Seems like the kind of phenomenon that is completely impossible to explain, let alone become the center point of a film, but I seem to have been proven wrong after watching the latest film “Caught Stealing”, directed by Darren Aronofsky.
If you are knowledgeable of Aronofsky’s filmography, you’ll notice that this film really goes against his mold. Aronofsky is known for creating thought provoking and depressing dramatic films that cast a lot of terror and suspense in the stories that they tell. He mastered this style through his films such as “Requiem for a Dream” (2000), “Black Swan” (2010), and most recently the Oscar winning “The Whale” (2022). “Caught Stealing” however decides to trade in this dark and gritty kind of storytelling for one that is full of character and takes the mantle of being both a dark comedy and crime thriller.
To give a brief synopsis, this film is set in 1998 in New York City and it follows Hank Thompson, portrayed by Austin Butler, a burnout ex-baseball player who primarily enjoys spending his time drinking the day away and swearing that the San Francisco Giants will go all the way this year. Hank lives next door to Russ Binder, portrayed by Matt Smith, who is a walking personification of the Punk scene in Britain in the 90s. Russ comes to Hank with a simple favor of watching his cat so Russ can visit his sick father. Seemingly just as Hank accepts this completely innocuous favor, his world turns upside down as he is accosted as a partner of Russ. Hank is suddenly in hot water with Russian, Puerto Rican, and Jewish mobsters and has to plunge deeper and deeper into their schemes just to try to make it out in one piece.
The film honestly mastered the ability to keep you on your toes, and I feel like that was the best thing the film had going for it. I would catch myself again and again in the theater fully expecting the plot to shake out one way, only to be blindsided by the completely new direction the movie decided to head towards. This movie is just as quick on its feet as Austin Butler’s character has to be to survive, and I am all the more thankful for it.
Another thing that I think this film did well was its set and sound design. The whole film is set in the lower east side of New York City, and really there is no place that captures the controlled chaos of this film better. This whole movie looks cramped and cluttered with tight shots that weave in and out of the narrow allies and pathways of New York making the watcher have to keep their eyes off the screen or miss something important. And all of this visual stimulus is matched audibly with the soundtrack that is just as high octane as Matt Smith’s wardrobe. Almost every aspect of this film is set to get the adrenaline pumping, and with all of it working together, I say that it really does succeed at what it sets out to achieve.
Now, while I rate this movie an easy seven or eight out ten at least, There were still definite factors that took points off for me. While I praise this film for the feelings that it evokes, it really is not one to leave you having to digest what you just saw for days after viewing. In fact, whenever the film tried to deepen its characters in different ways, I think that it falls flat at what it had intended to do. The biggest example of this lies in the biggest character of the movie, Hank. The biggest thing about the guy is that he loves baseball more than anything else in the world but had to give it up due to events in his past. The movie takes its time slowly building up his backstory and then attempts to draw back on it in the film’s climax to fully round out the arc of the character of Hank. This, and other parts like it involving the other characters, was reaching to say the least and took away from the insanity that we had been buying into for the last hour before that. It seemed as if Aronofsky felt that he had to work the deep characterization that he is known for into this film, but this film was nothing like his prior films, and that was ok.
More than anything, the film was full of character no matter what aspect of the film you looked at, and I am happy he took the risks, even if they all did not pan out to how all would have hoped. I hope that this is taken as a note to all established directors out there that you have an ocean of opportunity in front of you that allows you to make any film that you please, and pigeonholing yourself to what people expect from you only kneecaps your potential to make something truly great.
