Burned-out ex-baseball player Hank Thompson unexpectedly finds himself embroiled in a dangerous struggle for survival amidst the criminal underbelly of 1990s New York City, forced to navigate a tre...
When movie buffs say ‘weird is better’ in their movies, they either look towards body horror, surrealism, modernism, impressionism…..or in the case of “Caught Stealing”, just plain riotous, disparate adrenaline….even if it is all to a fault.
For someone who’s constantly spent many many years underwater in the arthouse fair, this is probably the most accessible or straightforward Darren Aronofsky’s direction has been and that comes across as both a compliment and a point of contention. Loosening up without completely letting go, this is basically him picking pockets with a deft touch and stealing the home base with enough style to pass.
As a former New Yorker myself, seeing my former home highlighted to the degree it does warm my heart; this production design is a beautiful recreation, perhaps the evocative snapshot of late ‘90s New York, especially the East Village. Practically a semi-homage to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, the grungy setting carries a lot of pulpy vitality that emboldens an already tumultuous atmosphere for that type of environment and highlighted snippets of the gentrification that cleaned up the city at the cost of its personality and bite. Making the most of a film’s setting also means thinking ahead to the character’s advantages and disadvantages in the time period and that old school mentality invariably keeps the mood fraught enough to matter, meaning Aronofsky’s affinity for downtrodden squalidness is still very much alive here.
Proactive camerawork from Matthew Libatique and assertive momentum in Andrew Weisblum’s editing is a sturdy combination with consistently dynamic framing and movements and near-faultless crowd control, meaning that the pacing pops off more often than not even when it is spread out over slightly more time.
Tone can occasionally take itself a bit too serious for its own good while letting its quirkiness linger about for too long but it’s a mostly delicate balance, sound design is fairly decent, costumes are both detrimental to the time period and decipher our characters individual personalities and journeys, and yeah, it’s not the greatest with building the tension and keeping it but the unpredictability guarantees you’ll stay locked to the screen. Of course, the sleazy thumping score from Rob Simonsen, further bolstered and amplified by a friction-fuelled soundtrack, helps supply much of the backbone for the film’s identity and on explicit content and the break-neck bouts of violence, it’s a solid win for the R-rating.
Every performer here emits a different kind of electricity, carrying over a layered personality for their characters to feel distinct and bounce off one another. Regina King and Zoë Kravitz are both alluring, attentive and command the screen in equal measure, Vincent D’Onofrio and Liev Schreiber were circling something powerful but never quite grasp it but Austin Butler is the star attraction here. I thought his role as Elvis was career-defining but this probably is neck-and-neck.
Dialogue remains consistently witty throughout.
A gritty, pacy, propulsive thriller adapted from Charlie Huston’s novel, the main thing that stuck out to me with this narrative is how concise it remains despite its constant fluctuations. Unflinching in its darkness and violence yet consistently alive with passable awkward humor, it channels the crackling energy of a classic crime caper without ever slipping into derivation….even if the screenplay occasionally stumbles from the sheer weight of so many revelations and pieces not quite gelling together; it’s a Brooklyn odyssey first, semi-careless stylized crash-course second but its still a narrative where every story beat is driven by a self-destructive addiction and enough of an acute interest in the transcendence of suffering and the rocky road to individual enlightenment. Script-wise, we know where this is going and how it’s going to end but it still makes for a fun palette cleanser.
Whether you’re impressed by this or not will wholly depend on your tastes: I was looking for something with a little more substance but wasn’t too opposed to an escapist popcorn-like thriller either. It gave me a nice balance between the two and as a wistful self-homage, there’s not too much to get annoyed about.
Its themes aren’t new; they’re practically the backbone to every other hero’s journey but they’re still executed firmly regarding the nature of regret and performance itself, being stuck in the past, the freeing liberation of escaping and how the longer you wait to make peace with your demons, the deeper it’ll poison the well and hurt everybody you care about and our protagonist gradually grows from that development. That being said, I can see many people not getting the impression that he needed to go through all this over-the-top hijinks to get there…especially when the movies barely skims through those themes long enough to barely make a difference. Only real theme that gets a follow-through here is how karma follows people around and those with bad intentions reap bad karma.
Also, keep in mind, this probably isn’t the most accurate depiction of Russian and orthodox Jewish street criminals out there.
Enough to be entertaining but not quite enough to be great, I don’t really get anything out of picking this apart; I did have fun with this one.
