The cantankerous old man in me desperately wants to dismiss Austin Butler the way that my parents’ generation chose to preemptively dismiss Brad Pitt. I guess I’ve reached an age where talented “pretty boys” (the previous generation’s words, not mine) are so inherently threatening to my rotting corpse of a visage that something in my gut instinctually wants to reject them. But whereas the boomers who raised me took decades to recognize Pitt’s god-given talent, I refuse to wait that long to enjoy Butler’s gifts. I choose to ignore my illogical urge to thumb my nose and categorize him as just some young whippersnapper cruising his way to success on pillowy lips and a velvety voice. I instead choose to happily accept that he’s a natural superstar who can carry a movie (and who comes across as a sweetie pie in all of his interviews).
In my defense, I do need to cite the outright audacity for someone to be both younger and more talented than I am. The AUDACITY! You understand.
Here Butler plays Hank Thompson, a former MLB shoo-in who, after a career-ending car accident, now lives the life of a charming alcoholic bartender. He hasn’t quite reached the pathetic stage of heavy boozing — he’s got a loving girlfriend (Zoë Kravitz), a sizable apartment, and a network of friends and acquaintances, many of whom happily enable his playfully self-destructive behavior. He knows how to work a crowd, how to run a bar, and how to appease and remove even his most obnoxiously inebriated patrons. It’s a subsistence lifestyle, and it’s fair to say that he’s not interested in upward mobility.
So naturally, when his neighbor (Matt Smith) has to leave town, Hank is hesitant to take on cat-sitting duties. And since this is a movie, this last minute caretaker appointment places our protagonist into a web of cops, robbers, gangs, mobs, and lots and lots of guns (and a little bit of blow). Reduced to its bare elements, this twisty, edgy thriller is similar to a Guy Ritchie caper, except it’s directed by Darren Aronofsky, and set in pre-9/11 New York instead of foggy Londontown.
Based on the book of the same name, Caught Stealing is a bit of a departure for one of cinema’s most enduring weirdos. It’s perhaps Aronofsky’s most conventional film, albeit with plenty of what we’ll call “fucked-upedness” to suit the filmmaker’s auteurial stamp. The film begins with a sort of After Hours feel (complete with a supporting role from Griffin Dunne), that makes great tonal use of the 1998 setting. As the intensity ratchets up and we learn more about Hank’s predicament, the film grows a bit more manic and kinetic, frequently filling in Hank’s past via highly stylized flashbacks, while introducing a wide roster of colorful (and startlingly expendable) supporting characters. Regina King sizzles, as always, as a tough-as-nails cop who dreams of a life outside of the city, but it’s Liev Schreiber and Vincent D’Onofrio who frequently steal the show as a pair of cold-blooded but (relatively) warm-hearted Hasidic mobsters.
And then of course there’s the Bud the Cat, played with adorable and fuzzy verve by Tonic (the cat, not the band). Do yourself a favor and look up his IMDb headshot.
Caught Stealing is an in-the-moment pleasure, but it’s not one that is likely to stick in the viewer’s memory for long. It’s consistently funny and most of the twists and turns are sharp enough to catch even the most savvy viewer off-guard, but it’s a weightless affair taken on the whole. It’s thrills for thrills’ sake, and at the end of a filmography positively dripping with thematic depth and cruel pathos, it’s fun to see Aronofsky operating on a pure entertainment level. His skills as a craftsman suit a project like this one just as well as they did a film that opens with Brendan Fraser in a fat suit furiously masturbating to internet porn, or a film that features Keith David coolly delivering the famous line “ass to assssssss.”
Sometimes it’s nice to watch a film with some balls on it that ultimately isn’t about anything except knocking the viewer around for an hour or two … and rocketing that damn Austin Butler even further into superstardom, the rat bastard. Ugh, he’s so cool.
Directed by Darren Aronofsky
Written by Charlie Huston, based on his own novel
Starring Austin Butler, Zoë Kravitz, Liev Schrieber, Tonic, Vincent D’Onofrio
Rated R, 107 minutes
