Caught Stealing Review

Darren Aronofsky Throws a Career Curveball by Making a Fun Crime Caper

By: Marc Kozak

Caught Stealing

Darren Aronofsky Throws a Career Curveball by Making a Fun Crime Caper

By: Marc Kozak

Darren Aronofsky may not quite be a household name, but most people can vividly recall his work. Tell someone he's the guy who made "Black Swan" and "Requiem for a Dream" and you'll get the same reaction -- a haunted stare, a slow exhale, and a comment somewhere along the lines of "that was so fucked up." Aronofsky has made a very successful career out of making original psychological thrillers that are often hostile towards the audience, intentionally confronting the viewer with something gruesome or, yes, fucked up, in order to get his point across. This approach has worked better with some material ("The Wrestler") than others ("The Whale"), but you generally know you're in for an intense ride with wild emotional swings whenever you sit down in front of his work.

That said, it comes as a bit of a surprise that Aronofsky's latest, "Caught Stealing," is more or less a standard, 90s-style crime thriller that's actually pretty fun, which is not at all a word I would use to describe any of the director's past work. Instead of heavy themes and metaphorical storytelling, we get a thematically thin caper that is more interested in lovingly capturing the energy of a particular era, a pre-9/11 New York City full of grungy characters and vibrant nightlife. It's certainly an homage to the early work of Martin Scorsese (particularly "After Hours," as almost every critic on Earth has reveled in naming) but feels a lot more like the spiritual successor to Guy Ritchie's early gangster movies, with wise-talking tough guys gleefully chasing each other through an urban criminal underworld.

In this case, chaos descends upon Henry "Hank" Thompson (Austin Butler), a bartender on the Lower East Side who is trying to drink away the memories of a high school car crash that killed his best friend and ended his promising baseball career. His girlfriend Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz) works as a paramedic and wants to have a serious adult relationship, which means Hank needs to stop drinking so much and get his life in order. Hank's neighbor Russ (Matt Smith, channeling Johnny Rotten) swings by and asks a reluctant Hank to watch his cat while he goes out of town for a few days, which becomes a kind of responsibility litmus test in Yvonne's eyes.

" It's more or less a standard, 90s-style crime thriller that's actually pretty fun, which is not at all a word I would use to describe any of the director's past work. "

Things quickly get out of hand when two Russian thugs come looking for Russ and beat the crap out of Hank because they assume he's in on whatever Russ is doing. Hank has no earthly idea what Russ is doing, which does nothing to stop increasingly violent mobsters from constantly showing up and pounding on him, eventually requiring him to go to the hospital and have one of his kidneys removed. A befuddled Hank goes to the cops, and Detective Roman (Regina King) tells him that Russ got caught in the middle of a drug war between the Russian mob and a local gang of murderous Hasidic Jews. They discover a key that Russ hid in the cat's litter box and from that moment on, Hank is on the run for his life as both sets of gangs threaten Hank and all of his loved ones if he doesn't turn over the key.

Butler's typically restrained performances make him a good choice to play Hank, who is just a kind-hearted, regular guy who gives money to bums, loves baseball and calls his mom every day to go over the latest scores. He struggles to contain his demons and move on with his life, haunted not only by his own wasted potential but by frequent nightmares that relive the car accident that made him a killer. He can move away from his past and into a brighter future, as represented by his relationship with Yvonne, or sink further into the depths of despair and end up a criminal lowlife, at home amongst the mobsters and murderers.

Kravitz and Butler have a great chemistry and it's hard not to root for them as a couple. Kravitz's Yvonne has a lovely energy, still playful and fun, but determined to escape the world of bars and drunks. She clearly loves Hank and is incredibly patient and kind when talking about his past, but less tolerant of him wallowing in it. The movie's greatest sin is removing her presence far too early, and in such a disappointingly cliched manner, treating her as nothing more than a tool for Hank's journey in the end, like so many females in action movies before her.

Still, it's a lot of fun to watch Hank, who is no assassin and doesn't even want to hold a gun, struggle to evade his much more dangerous enemies. Aronofsky's longtime cinematographer Matthew Libatique warmly covers a lot of classic New York hotspots, dutifully capturing the action with minimal flash outside of a few lovely overhead drone shots that track Butler as he hustles through alleyways. It's interesting to compare this to Spike Lee's recent "Highest 2 Lowest," a much more ostentatious display of the city. I much prefer Aronofsky's more lived-in approach.

If anything, the movie leans a little too hard on action movie cliches. Many of the supporting characters are archetypes -- the Russian mobsters, the corrupt cops, the shit-talking bar dwellers -- even Hank's past isn't used to say anything particularly novel or interesting. It's movie that simply wants to entertain, not bash you over the head with ideas, which is well and good (and feels like something new for Aronofsky specifically), but if you aren't swayed by its old-fashioned charm, you might find it all a bit meaningless.

The movies' final act is probably its strongest, thanks in part to a heavy dose of Vincent D'Onofrio and Liev Schreiber as deadly Hasidic brothers who like Hank but still won't hesitate to kill him to get what they want. They bring him to their mother's Shabbos dinner and are generally sympathetic to his situation. He's an innocent brought into the machinations of a "sad world, broken world," where the strong survive and the weak are devoured.

"Caught Stealing" strikes a good balance between nostalgic scene setting and captivating crime thrills, resulting in the most normal movie of Aronofsky's career. It's a muscular, star-studded crowd-pleaser that would probably be the biggest movie of 2001. As it stands, it's the kind of delightful comfort food that doesn't seem to ever get old.