Caught Stealing

There are your typical opposing sides of the law who are only after what they want--no more and no less and will do anything to get what they want--even kill without batting an eyelash. Then there's the two opposing sides who think that this one individual is playing them, but he is your quintessential patsy not knowing anything while not being believed. This film, "Caught Stealing" makes for a somewhat humorous and unexpected film which sets it apart for the usual fare of this genre. 

Burned out ex-baseball player Hank Thompson (Austin Butler) unexpectedly finds himself embroiled in a dangerous struggle for survival amidst the criminal underbelly of 1990s New York City only after he promises to take care of his fiend and neighbor's, Russ (Matt Smith) cat, Bud while he's taking care of his sick dad in London. After Russ leaves, two thugs show up at Russ' door wondering where he is and Hank gets practically killed not answering questions he didn't know. So he knows that he must confide to His girlfriend, Yvonne (Zoe Kravitz) and call the cops and ended up speaking to Detective Roman (Regina King) for help. From this point, so many other people get involved and all hell breaks loose. This is simply a treacherous underworld Hank had never imagined. 

Others to round out the cast are Griffin Dunne as Paul, Liev Schreiber as Lipa, Vincent D'Onofrio as Shummy, Action Bronson as Amtrak, Benito Martinez Ocasio as Colorado, Carol Kane as Bubbe, Nikita Kukushkin as Pavel and Yuri Kolokolnikov as Aleksei.

This was directed with grit and conciseness by Darren Aronofsky ("Pi" '98, "Requiem for a Dream" 2000, "The Fountain" '06, "The Wrestler" '08, "Black Swan" '10, "Noah" '14, "Mother!" '17, "The Whale" '22, "Postcard from Earth" '23) plus TV, shorts, a video game, a music video and a video. This is one director you can't pigeon-hole--in fact, he is the quintessential chameleon since he has approached most of all the genres. His ability to get his actors, especially Butler to convince the audience of the realness of the characters they were portraying was carried out with perfection. If you need convincing, watch "The Whale" or "Black Swan" and you'll soon see. If you like his brand of directing, his "Breakthrough" is in pre-production. It was cleverly written by Charlie Houston ("All Signs of Death" (TV movie) '10) plus TV, based on the book by the same name by Charlie Huston. This script was sequenced well and was cohesive. Even though this writer only has a TV movie and some TV to his credit, the fact that he wrote the screenplay from his own book certainly assisted him in his ability to create an interesting premise. But even though he is the novelist, this film was still a tour de force not only for Houston, but for Butler as well. This actor has definitely showed his acting chops is the amount of films he has been involved with, "Elvis" comes to mind which he received an Oscar nomination for. 

Certainly.if you like Aronofsky's work, you'll love this. But if you want to see an actor who gets better with each film he does, Butler is definitely the other reason to see this film. This actor has so much raw talent that is just waiting to be used for more films down the road. It's a bit rough around the edges, but worthy of the price of admission. 

Out of 4 Stars: 4                                  Rated: R                                           107mins.