Writer- director Darren Aronofsky returns after the Oscar winning success of The Whale (2022) with ‘Caught Stealing’ a wildly different film in every respect. Based on Charlie Huston’s book, who also writes the screenplay here, it is set in 1998 and sees ex-baseball player Hank ( Austin Butler) now working in a dive of a bar whilst his girlfriend Yvonne (Zoe Kravitz) is the bigger wage earner as a medic but bothare happy and loved up. Its not going to last for long as things soon get tricky if not border line fatal for him when he agrees to look after his neighbour’s cat. That neighbour is Russ an almost unrecognisable Matt Smith sporting a Mohican haircut, cockney geezer accent, studded leather jacket and spouting c-bombs like it’s a national sport. It’s a cosmos away from his Dr Who days.
Very quickly it becomes clear that Russ is involved in a psychotically violent criminal underworld that starts with two East European heavies looking for him and administering a near fatal beating of Hank after he refuses to tell them where his neighbour is. From hereonin Hank finds himself embroiled in the attention of a bunch of hoodlums looking for a key plus a stack of cash that is not his. And it’s not just the East Europeans who are after him, there’s two Hassidic Jews (Vincent D’Onofrio and Liev Schreiber) who are equally psychotic plus gang boss Colorado (Bad Bunny) as determined as the others to get the key and the cash. There’s only a cop, Roman (Regina King), able to help Hank and even then he might be better off on his own. But with the crims getting ever more desperate Hanks finds Yvonne is much a target as he and Russ are.
Aronofsky’s back catalogue is a wildly diverse one taking in films as varied as the gruelling, ‘Requiem for a Dream’, the unsettling ‘Black Swan’, the even more disturbing ‘Mother!’, the Biblical epic, ‘Noah’ and the human drama of ‘The Whale’ but ‘Caught Stealing’ is far different from anything he’s done before. There’s a sense that he is having a whale of time with this frenetically paced film as indeed are the cast especially Smith, D’onofrio and Schreiber all set to an absolutely banging indie soundtrack.
But Caught Stealing is a far from perfect film playing like a Coen Brothers first draft script with a splash of Guy Ritchie and Tarantino-esque dialogue thrown in for good measure. But despite that Aronofsky’s films are always worth a look and this is no different even if the cat steals many of the scenes.
related feature : Brendan Fraser and the fat suit in The Whale
related feature : Oscar winning make up genius Howard Berger talks about ‘From Dusk til Dawn’ with Tarantino
Here’s the Caught Stealing trailer…..
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