Caught Stealing (2025) Review
4/5 Stars
Caught Stealing is unlike anything Darren Aronofsky has made before. He’s best known for arthouse films like Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan. Caught Stealing is a street-level crime comedy thriller. It’s a fun time filled with eccentric characters, but there is an unusual dark streak through this movie which is the one element that feels closest to Aronofsky’s previous work.
Caught Stealing takes place in 1998 New York City. It follows bartender Hank Thompson. His chances at a baseball career were ruined after getting into a car accident that broke his leg and killed his friend. Now, he wallows in drinking and casual sex with his friend Yvonne. They have genuine chemistry with each other, but he isn’t taking the relationship seriously enough for her. His friend and neighbor Russ has to take off suddenly to London to see his father who had a stroke. Russ leaves his cat with Hank to take care of while he’s gone. What Russ doesn’t tell him is that he is caught up with some business between two rival crime factions. Russ’s sudden absence brings all the trouble to Hank’s door.
Caught Stealing has the elements of a Guy Ritchie film. It stars Austin Butler who is hot right now. His character, Hank, is cool, charming, and Zoë Kravitz as Yvonne is every bit his equal. Matt Smith plays his hotheaded punk rocker neighbor who has a soft spot for Hank. He flies off the handle when getting a noise complaint from the guy living down the hall. The man down the hall becomes a recurring character as he tries to work up the courage to assert himself about the noise as Hank’s troubles get worse. Vincent D’Onofrio and Liev Schreiber play two Hasidic Jews. They are very respectful and loving to their family, but they also have the reputation of being the deadliest criminals in town. They carry uzis, silenced pistols, and grenades on them when they are out handling business. They are one of the crime factions after Hank. The other crime faction has two Russian men. One of which behaves like an attack dog. In a scene where he’s roughing up Hank, he gets on all fours and rams his head into him. Rapper Bad Bunny plays the boss of these Russians, and he loves making speeches about his gun while threatening to shoot Hank’s dick off. The place where this movie diverges from Guy Ritchie is how harsh Hank’s reality gets.
When Hank gets roughed up by the Russians, the scene goes on longer than normal. It gets uncomfortable to the point of concerning. The scene ends with Hank laying in a pool of his own urine. Then blood starts coming out. He wakes up in the hospital missing a kidney. It had to be removed because it was too badly damaged in the beating. Hank’s life gets worse from here as people close to him get killed over this business with the criminals. This isn’t the fun crowd-pleaser it first seemed. The humor continues, but Hank is really going through it.
As Hank is running for his life, he begins to realize he’s been running from his past trauma all this time. The car accident has affected his commitment issues. It fuels his obsession with professional baseball. He’s a big Giants fan, and this comes up a lot. Hank doesn’t even drive any more to the point he puts his own life in danger having his concussed friend Russ drive for him instead. In this extreme situation, he’s learning to face his fears and his past to get through it because running is making things much worse.
Caught Stealing is an odd one to judge from Darren Aronofsky. I enjoyed the movie, but Aronofsky usually takes much bigger swings in his work than this. He doesn’t always connect with me. His last film, The Whale, was definitely a miss. Caught Stealing is better, but it is the most normal, mainstream film I’ve seen of his. I don’t know if this means he’s changing as a filmmaker, or if he just needed the money. I’m not sure if he elevated the material because I don’t see much of him in it. I couldn’t have guessed he directed it if I went in blind. As a person who loves Black Swan and regularly thinks about how wild it is that the movie Noah exists, I wouldn’t be happy if he continued making movies like Caught Stealing. Taking the movie on its own, it is a solid crime comedy thriller.