From the moment I saw the trailer for Caught Stealing I immediately was taken back to the late 1990s, when so many films were trying to emulate the success Pulp Fiction had by mixing comedy and violence. I mean, the kinetic energy of the trailer was giving me the same vibes I got when I first saw Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and The Boondock Saints. This isn’t a bad thing at all; heck, I miss these kinds of films. Lately it seems all the action films now are bad John Wick knockoffs or the woke superhero films that lack anything resembling artistic merit. I had every intention on seeing Caught Stealing in theaters, because this just looked like the kind of film I’d have fun with, but unfortunately this had such a short window at the theaters that it was gone before it had a chance to even find an audience. The quick turnaround with these films moving from theaters to streaming is enough to make your head spin, and the film studios wonder why they are taking losses, and this isn’t even a big-budget film despite having a solid cast and a relatively well-known director at the helm. I’m not saying this is a film that would ever break the bank and be a $100 million runaway hit, but this is a film that has the potential to gain a cult following. In a world where physical media is being killed off by the studios, it’s as though the studios are making it impossible to generate a profit from anything no matter if it finds an audience or not.
OK, enough of my soapbox ramblings, and on to the film …
Hank (Austin Butler) is one of those guys who could have been a star baseball player, but one stupid decision ruined it all after a car accident wrecks his knee and brings his dreams to a crashing halt. Now he’s working as a bartender in New York in the 1990s, and his life isn’t looking so great. He’s a diehard San Francisco Giants fan, and then he has Yvonne (Zoe Kravitz) as a girlfriend, who seems to be the only positive thing he has going for him. Early in the film Hank gets roped into cat-sitting for his punk-rock (liberty spikes and all) neighbor, Russ (Matt Smith), who is going to London to check on his dying father. As it turns out, this cat-sitting gig ends up being the worst decision of Hank’s life. Russ isn’t gone more than 24 hours before Russian gangsters show up at his doorstep, and they end up beating Hank so bad he loses a kidney … yet things only continue to get worse when Hank discovers that there are several violent groups looking for Russ, and Hank is caught in the crossfire.
I’ll be the first to admit that the plot at first glance doesn’t seem all that original, but there are some curveballs in this story that kept me engaged and very much showed me that this story did offer some surprises. If I had one major complaint, I wish we got more of Hank and Russ together. This really could have been a fun duo to watch with them constantly at one another’s throats. Some of my favorite bits of the film were with seeing Butler and Smith playing off one another. Then there is the cat, Buddy (Tonic). As adorable as this feline is, I wish there was more with Hank and the cat bonding, because their relationship is a bit crucial to how the film plays out, and the bond just isn’t quite earned in my opinion, As to the cast, I wish we got a little bit more with everyone, because I liked these characters, even the scumbags, but there are just too many characters sprinkled in this film to do them all justice. The film would need to be well over four hours.
Now, I do have one logistical gripe with the film, and it has to do with the violence. Considering the amount of abuse Hank is delivered over the course of the film, it is a bit hard to believe he’d be running, sliding, and climbing ladders two days following having a kidney being removed, and we never seeing him reaching for pain pills. I know I’m supposed to suspend my disbelief, because it is a movie, but for a film that tries to be grounded with the violence, it seems like this was a bit of an oversight.
When the trailer first dropped for this, I was excited to see that it was directed by Darren Aronofsky, but at the same time it seemed like an odd choice for him when you look at the other films in his catalog. In many ways it’s like he’s going back to his roots, like with Pi and Requiem for a Dream, only not nearly as dark, but instead he seems to be wanting to have fun, and that really comes across in this film. In this fun trip back to the 90s, he takes us into rundown streets and apartments of the city before gentrification could take hold and Giuliani could clean up the crime in the city. The little touches of having the pay phones and personally my favorite little cameo in the film is when the characters walk past Kim’s Video.
The cinematography, the editing, and the music work so well in this film. The energy pretty much holds up the entire film. While I doubt this film will receive any awards attention, I still had a blast with the film. This is the kind of film I wish we could see more of, movies just wanting to have fun, no agenda, just 100 minutes of popcorn eye-candy to escape with that isn’t packed with CGI. I’m sure this will find an audience on streaming . If this were the 1990s, this would be a soundtrack I’d have to have in my collection. The biggest takeaway from this film that I have is how it showed me how much technology has taken from us as fans and how the new ways of technology and presentation of cinema isn’t the best way to experience it.
