The brand new crime comedy Caught Stealing unfolds within the yr 1998, touring throughout a distinctly grungy New York Metropolis—all dingy subway platforms and drab Chinatown residences. The time-frame differs simply barely from that of the novel it’s primarily based on, which is about in 2000. I can consider just one cause the director, Darren Aronofsky, might need determined to make this tweak: The movie shares its time and place along with his debut characteristic, Pi, which premiered that very same yr. The micro-budget manufacturing, which follows a paranoid mathematician looking for order within the chaos of numbers, established Aronofsky as a filmmaker desirous to push his imaginative and prescient of town as directly shabby and lovely.
That Caught Stealing echoes the scruffy, anything-goes ambiance of Aronofsky’s earliest work provides it a way of frenzied nostalgia. However the movie itself provides few indicators of the occasions—aside from the epic collapse of that yr’s New York Mets within the playoff race, which is rudely proven within the background. The story is, reasonably, a timeless story of mistaken id: Austin Butler stars as a bartender chased round city by seemingly each member of town’s legal underworld, for causes unbeknownst to him. Aronofsky has, because the grittiness of Pi and Requiem for a Dream, flitted with alacrity from style to style, making an attempt his hand at biblical epics (Noah) and claustrophobic dramas (The Whale). However Caught Stealing’s pitch-black, pulpy mode reveals the drawbacks of prioritizing model over all else.
The canine days of summer season—a interval that sometimes provides up stale or forgettable fare—do want extra movies like the sort Aronofsky has tried to make: an attractive, gritty thriller for grown-ups, starring a bunch of handsome stars. But Caught Stealing remembers, at greatest, a disposable Blockbuster rental from the period by which it’s set. Aronofsky has carried out an excellent job summoning a bygone Decrease Manhattan—the almost-derelict bars, crummy walk-ups, and greasy diners of yesteryear. (At one level, there’s even a outstanding shot of a black-and-white cookie, a metropolis staple.) The place Aronofosky is much less profitable, nevertheless, is making the motion as alluring as its romantic backdrop.
Butler performs Hank Thompson, who was on his method to changing into a star ballplayer for his beloved San Francisco Giants earlier than a automobile crash ended his probabilities. Now his major pursuits embody flirting along with his girlfriend, Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz); operating his fingers by his lengthy, stringy blond hair; and partying laborious. Hank is supposedly residing on the backside of a bottle, struggling to remain afloat after his athletic desires had been dashed, however Butler (a really proficient performer) is just too charming and put collectively to promote that notion. When he unintentionally turns into liable for cleansing up a drug supplier’s mess, Hank is curiously unperturbed, greeting violent threats, loss of life, and destruction with little greater than a wan sigh.
Hank is sucked into the disarray by his neighbor, a mohawked ne’er-do-well British punk named Russ (Matt Smith) who asks Hank to feed his cat for just a few days whereas he makes a visit to London. Quickly sufficient, all types of strangers come calling looking for a key Russ left behind—together with aggressive Russian mobsters, two gun-toting Hasidim (Vincent D’Onofrio and Liev Schreiber), a hard-bitten NYPD detective (Regina King), and a gangster named Colorado (Unhealthy Bunny). None of those characters rises above probably the most cartoonish outlines, regardless of the general capability of their performers. I did admire Aronofsky throwing in further items of stunt casting that paid homage to Decrease Manhattan–set movies of many years previous. The actor Carol Kane seems for one massive scene; she starred within the exceptional Hester Avenue, as a latest immigrant struggling to assimilate on the flip of the twentieth century. There’s additionally a worthy half for Griffin Dunne, who led Martin Scorsese’s masterpiece After Hours—one other panicked story of New Yorker paranoia.
However referencing Scorsese, the ceaselessly king of the New York crime film, is a danger Caught Stealing in all probability shouldn’t have taken. I spent a lot of the operating time reminiscing on simply how considerate and composed the most effective examples of this style could be, such because the classics New Jack Metropolis and King of New York and the more moderen Good Time—movies that discovered pathos within the lives of drug lords and petty criminals. Caught Stealing is much extra ragged across the edges; its characters’ solely motivations are on the lookout for cash and hoping to outlive, aside from the saintly, underwritten Yvonne. Hank is offered a distinct downside: He’s handed a beating early that damages his kidneys, making it unwise for him to drink, but each time he swigs a beer after that, there’s nonetheless no sense of stakes—Butler is simply too implacably fairly a display screen presence to ever appear in real hazard.
I have no idea what to make of Aronofsky’s profession of late. Caught Stealing is healthier than the portentous and heavy-handed The Whale, however each movies have the vibe of a visually competent director intent on creating putting photos. With The Whale, Aronofsky portrayed his extraordinarily chubby protagonist like a skyscraper-size monster, utilizing the restrictions of the character’s cramped-apartment setting as a type of directorial problem. In Caught Stealing, Aronofsky drops the viewer into an older New York as one other inventive train, however renders it as a playground for bloody and one-dimensional silliness. His talent as a cinematic storyteller is on show—I simply missed the narrative depth and hazard that used to return with the elegant photographs.
